


Your people will be my people, and your God my God

by PerplexinglyParadoxialPerson



Series: Don’t urge me to leave you or turn back from you [4]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Art, Avengers Family, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Bucky thinks Steve is an Asset, Chosen Soulmates, Comfort Food, Depressed Steve Rogers, Digital Art, Dissociation, F/M, Hurt Bucky Barnes, Hurt Steve Rogers, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Mental Link, Natasha Romanov Is Not A Robot, Pietro Maximoff Lives, Podfic Welcome, Protective Avengers, Protective Bucky Barnes, Protective Jarvis (Iron Man movies), Sharing Pain, Soul Bond, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Steve Rogers and the 21st Century, Telepathic Bond, Transformative Works Welcome, caretaker bucky barnes, eventually
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-28
Updated: 2020-07-21
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:48:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 20
Words: 40,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22933570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PerplexinglyParadoxialPerson/pseuds/PerplexinglyParadoxialPerson
Summary: Steve wakes up in a world where everything’s different, the technology, the culture, New York, and war. No matter how different things may seem though, some things never change...
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, Jane Foster & Darcy Lewis, Jane Foster/Thor, Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Steve Rogers & Avengers Team, Wanda maxi - Relationship
Series: Don’t urge me to leave you or turn back from you [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1586707
Comments: 147
Kudos: 205





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [edges blurred](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13689492) by [moonythejedi394](https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonythejedi394/pseuds/moonythejedi394). 



> Welcome everyone to the second story in this series! If you haven’t read the first one, please do! It will be hard to understand this one if you haven’t read the other one first.
> 
> Inspired by edges blurred because of its amazing recovering Bucky storyline, which inspired a lot of moments in this story! 
> 
> This story will be posted every Tuesday, with this being the first (and probably last) Thursday it will be posted on. I might have delayed chapters, depending on how things go, but expect chapters with a more consistent length, and probably longer chapters as well. In the previous story, I divided it into chapters last, which made them... very inconsistent in length.
> 
> Hope everyone enjoys!

When Tony had offered to let Steve stay in the tower, he had almost thought that Tony was joking. With how Steve had acted towards him... with all of the things he said that had turned out so wrong... it was a shock.

Steve had agreed to move in, which seemed to shock Tony who said, “well now you can get out of that tiny apartment. You’ll have to stay in a guest floor for now, but I’ll make sure that your floor is ready soon.”

A floor... an entire floor, just for him? But if that’s what Tony wanted to do, and it wasn’t a joke... he couldn’t exactly stop him. He needed to make sure that the Avengers could fight without him once he died, and the best way to keep SHIELD from trying to recruit him, would be to be training and living with the Avengers. They had made a good team, but if it wasn’t for Coulson’s death, and his experience with leading, it could have been a lot worse. He needed to pull them together, because if Thor was right, and other aliens might see them as ready for a “higher form of war,” then they needed to be prepared for anything.

He made it to his apartment, through the shattered streets. Luckily his apartment building was far away enough that it hadn’t been damaged. He gathered up his few possessions and clothes, fitting in only one small box, and began heading back to the tower. Everything but his clothes, personal hygiene items, and a few small items that had been on his person when he crashed the plane, belonged to the apartment. He didn’t want to take that stuff, and besides, if Tony was providing him with an entire floor... there’d probably be some things that would come with it.

He was ashamed of how he had treated Tony. The first time that he had seen him without the mask on the Helicarrier, his first thought had been about how attractive Tony was. The thought had shocked him so much that he had been sharp and antagonistic to him, no matter how much he didn’t deserve it. He had only gotten more belligerent when, during their fight, he had started to get hard. Just the thought that this stupid body would betray Bucky, his soulmate, like that, had made him even angrier. Yeah, Tony was his type, and he hadn’t exactly been tugging himself off at all, but that didn’t mean that his body should have betrayed him like that.

He made it into the lobby of Stark tower. The receptionist gaped at him, but once she saw his face, she gestured to a more subtle elevator near the back. Once the door closed, he realized that the elevator didn’t have any buttons.

Before he could get too worried, a voice spoke from speakers on the ceiling. “Hello Captain Rogers, I am JARVIS, what floor would you like to go to?”

The voice had startled him, but he quickly calmed down. Of course Stark would have a butler, even if he wasn’t physically present. “Um, hello JARVIS-whatever floor Tony’s on I guess. I want to let him know that I’m here, and ask what room I’m staying in.”

“Of course Captain Rogers,” JARVIS said. “Sir is on the common floor.”

The elevator began to move upwards, and Steve said, “thank you JARVIS.”

When the elevator doors opened, he saw Tony looking over the destruction, clear sheets covering the broken windows.

“Capsicle!” He said, spreading his arms, “welcome to my humble abode.”

“Nice to see you Tony,” Steve replied. “I hope that me staying here isn’t too much trouble.”

“It’s no problem,” Tony said. “The guest rooms are just taking up space, and besides, I have a professional designer already on the payroll, so it’s not like your finished floor will take a lot of effort. I should thank you really, Natasha decided to stay at the tower after she heard that you were staying here. Should I be worried about the soundproofing in the guest rooms?”

“Wha-“ Steve said, a spark of anger breaking through the apathy. Of course she would follow him here. He knew that she had been observing him while she taught him modern fighting techniques. They probably had to make sure that he wouldn’t go crazy on a mission.

“Ohhh,” Tony said with a grin. “Or are you a hundred year old virgin? Waiting for marriage or something?”

Bucky would love this, he thought, the hollow place in his chest aching. If he was here, he’d manage to get Tony back somehow... he managed to reply firmly. “That never has, and never will be your business.”

“I’m definitely putting my money on the virgin option then,” Tony said with a smirk. “You’ll be on floor fifty-two, sharing a floor with Natasha, and Bruce will be on the fifty-first floor with Clint once I can convince him to move in. It’ll be temporary though, once your floor is done, you can move there.”

“You weren’t kidding?” Steve asked, “we actually get an entire floor for ourselves?”

“Of course,” Tony said. “Pepper and I will be in the penthouse once she comes back from Malibu, and you can use anything on the common floor or in the gym. Although I might need to reinforce some things...”

He pulled out an electronic device, like a phone but bigger, and began muttering to himself. Steve didn’t want to be rude, but he knew that if Tony was anything like Howard, then it would be a long time before he came up for air, so he could go to his room.


	2. Training

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And team building

A few days after the battle, once Bruce had settled into the lab, Tony was talking with Pepper in the common room over some leftover soup. The elevator doors opened, and revealed Cap.

“Hey Capsicle,” Tony said. “What’s cracking? Maybe your bones?”

Cap gave him an odd look, but said hi, then turned to Pepper. “And you are?”

“Pepper Potts,” she said, standing up and shaking his hand. “I’m CEO of Stark Industries, and Tony’s girlfriend. Nice to meet you Captain Rogers.”

“Nice to meet you as well,” Cap said. “I... I guess you know who I am.”

“Yes I do,” Pepper replied, sitting down again. “But you came in here for a reason?”

“Oh yeah,” Cap said. “I wanted to talk to Tony about team training.”

“Training?” Tony asked, “I don’t know about you, but somehow I doubt that the Black Widow will need much training.”

“Not that kind of training,” Cap said. “I was thinking more... training as a team so we can work better together. Thor did say that there was the possibility of more and stronger aliens coming along. I’d like to be prepared for anything, and at the top of our game just in case.”

“That... would probably be a good idea,” Tony admitted grudgingly. “How often would we do it? It would have to happen in the tower’s gym of course, unless you have something else in mind.”

“The tower’s gym would probably be the best choice,” Cap said. “I would say that once a week would be best, but once every two weeks would work as well. Thanks for offering the gym, I agree, it probably would be the best for this.”

“Demanding,” Tony grumbled absently. “But why are you asking me? You’re obviously team leader.”

“Well,” Cap said sheepishly. “I have no clue how to contact Hawkeye or Thor, and was wondering if you had any ideas. I’d really like to start as soon as possible so we can be prepared.”

“Good idea,” Tony said, images of the Chitauri’s spaceships flashing in his head. “I can contact Clint, but I doubt we’ll get ahold of Thor, he didn’t exactly leave us a phone number.”

“Thanks anyways Tony,” Cap said. “I’ll leave you to it then,” and walked into the elevator.

“Did Thor really say that it was possible that other aliens would come?” Pepper asked.

“Yeah,” Tony said, his heart beating a bit faster. “He said that using the tesseract would show that we were ready for a “higher form of war.” I figure that Cap’s right, better safe than sorry.”

“No point in risking it,” Pepper agreed. “Now why don’t we get back to our date.”

+-+

A few days later, every Avenger but Thor was gathered in the gym in their uniforms.

“Ok everyone,” Cap said, “thanks for coming. I figured that it would be a good idea to train as a team, because of what Thor said about the possibility of more aliens attacking. I figured that it will be better to be prepared than not. I’m hoping that we can do this at least once a week. We’ll start by sparring a bit and see where it goes from there.”

“But if we’re going to be fighting together,” Tony asked, confused. “Then why are we fighting each other?”

“Well,” Cap said. “Among all of you, I’ve trained the most with Natasha, and during the fight, I was most in sync with her. This way we can get a better idea of what everyone’s capable of.”

“But what about me?” Bruce asked, “I don’t think that the Hulk can train.”

“Yeah,” Cap said, “but I noticed that the Hulk will follow your lead. When we were on the Helicarrier, you were mad at Natasha, and the Hulk went after her. You decided to trust me, and during the battle the Hulk followed my orders. I looked at the footage of when you first became the Hulk, and the only people you went after, were the soldiers that were chasing you. I figure that if you trust us all more, then the Hulk will be more likely to follow orders. You can sit on the side during this part though.”

“That actually makes a lot of sense,” Bruce said, “but-“

There was a sudden crash of thunder, and JARVIS said, “sir, Thor is on the common floor balcony, would you like me to direct him here?”

Tony blinked, surprised by the good timing. “Sure JARVIS,” he said, “bring him here.”

Only a minute later, Thor bounded into the room, dressed in his armour, hammer in hand.

“What is happening my friends? Heimdal told me that the Avengers were assembling!”

“How did you know that?” Natasha asked, “were you watching us?”

“No friends,” Thor boomed. “I merely asked Heimdal, the all seeing one, to warn me if he saw you all together in your armour. Is there an enemy to fight?”

“No,” Cap said. “There is no enemy, but we are having a group training session, if you want to join.”

“Ah,” Thor said. “I would love to join in your training!”

“So,” Cap said. “These training sessions should be happening once a week, depending on everyone’s schedule. We are going to start with sparring each other today. We can start with Clint and Natasha, so I can get a better idea Clint’s hand to hand skills.”

Clint and Natasha walked to some of the mats on the floor and began to circle each other. They circled each other for a surprisingly long time, pacing around and around, occasionally darting forwards a bit, but always pulling back into the circles they made. With no obvious signal they lunged at each other, and began to fight properly.

The fight was impossibly fast, dodging and leaping, ducking and diving. They looked like bouncy balls tied together with elastic, springing apart, then being yanked together again.

Tony could barely understand what was happening, he had been taught some boxing by Happy, and he knew how to fight in the suit of course, but this was a completely different level, not even mentioning the speed of it!

Eventually, Clint went down, Natasha pinning him to the floor, face down. He struggled a bit, but he didn’t get anywhere, so he grudgingly said uncle.

“You’re getting old,” Natasha said mockingly as she got up.

Clint groaned, hauling himself upwards, “maybe just a little.”

“Next is Thor and Tony, so I can get a better idea of our in-air capabilities,” Cap said, as Natasha and Clint cleared the mats.

“Of course,” Thor boomed. “I would love to fight the man of iron!”

“Sure,” Tony said. “Just don’t summon any lightning in here point break, I’d rather not have to rebuild this room. I mean I can, but-“

“Ok,” Cap said. “Start in three... two... one... go!”

Tony immediately shot up, dodging the hammer that came hurtling towards him.

The battle was exhausting, the agile twists that he had to do to avoid the hammer used a surprising amount of muscles. He couldn’t do anything to wear Thor down though, the few repulsor blasts that he managed to get off were mostly dodged, but even the ones that hit barely seemed to slow Thor down.

Eventually, Thor got frustrated and began to fly after him. His flight wasn’t very agile, and was significantly slower than Tony, but still hard to avoid, especially with the limited space.

If Tony had been less tired, he would have been able to avoid Thor’s arms, but he wasn’t, so Thor managed to grab him after a while. He tried to wriggle out of Thor’s grip, trying to aim his repulsors at him, but he was too strong.

He knew that there was no way he’d get out of his grip so he said, “uncle! I surrender!”

Thor landed on the ground and put Tony down, patting him on the back. “That was a fantastic battle!” Thor boomed, “you put up a good fight!”

“Likewise,” Tony said, staggering from the slap on the back. “But call me Tony please.”

He looked towards Cap, who had a thoughtful look on his face. “Can you carry a person while you fly Tony? Do you have anything that someone can grab?”

“Not at the moment,” Tony said. “Why do you ask?”

“Well,” Cap said, an odd look on his face. “Since Clint is our sniper, he’ll likely need a high spot with a good view. If we fight mostly in city’s like the pattern has shown, facing enemy’s strong enough to topple buildings, then that spot will likely be a tall building that has a chance of collapsing. I’d feel better if we had someone to get him up there and back down safely. Thor would be our emergency backup in case Tony is incapacitated. He’s a lot slower and also less agile, but in a pinch...”

“That makes sense,” Tony said. “If you can come to my lab once this is done, I can start work on something to keep you from falling off.”

“Good idea,” Clint said.

“Now,” Cap said. “How much first aid does everyone know?”

“I have basic field first aid,” Natasha said. “Stitching wounds, basic treatment for shock, splinting joints, etc.”

“Me too,” Clint said.

“I know the same,” Thor replied. “But treatments for Asgardians may differ from Midgardian treatments.”

“I have some experience with medical technology and reading results,” Tony said, “but not much else.”

“I probably know more than most of you,” Bruce said. “It still isn’t very much though. I had a few classes on the human body in university, and I’ve been a travelling doctor for a while. I know how to put in IV’s, help someone give birth, treatments for common diseases, and a few other things.”

“That’s good,” Cap said. “I only know basic first aid as well, so we could use a doctor of a sort. Even if we don’t need the Hulk, a doctor that can defend themselves on a battlefield is an invaluable resource. You may not know much, but it’s more than any of us. Thor, I would suggest spending some time with Natasha and Clint, comparing treatments, see if there is anything dramatically different.”

“Of course Captain,” Thor boomed, Clint and Natasha agreeing as well.

“That’s a good idea,” Bruce said, almost reluctantly. “I can start reading up on things that I might need to know.”

“Thanks Bruce,” Cap said. “Does anyone else have anything else that could be useful?”

They all looked at each other, and Tony said, “I’ll probably think of other things later, but for now we can have a movie night while we’re all here.”

“Good idea,” Clint said. “We should watch Die Hard!”

“I agree,” Natasha said.

“What are movies?” Thor asked, “I have never heard of anything of the type.”

Tony was about to explain, but Steve interrupted. “Thanks for the invitation, but I need to get this information down before I forget it. I’ll see you all later.”

He walked into the elevator, giving them all a small wave.

“Wow,” Tony said angrily. “He’s perfectly fine talking strategy, but as soon as we want to do something fun, he disappears! He must be barely tolerating us.”

Natasha narrowed her eyes and said, “from all of the files I’ve read, his memory was enhanced by the serum as well, has a near eidetic memory. That isn’t even a good excuse.”

“Rude much,” Tony said angrily.

Apparently they weren’t good enough for mr. perfect. It made sense, the person that his father had idolized so much would be just as unimpressed with him as his father, despite all that he had done for the world.

They began walking out of the room, and Thor said, “you were going to explain movies to me?”

“Well,” Bruce said, “they’re... moving pictures that tell a story. They can be drawn, or recordings of real people. I guess that it’ll be easier to show you than to talk about it.”

“I agree Brucie,” Tony said, “let’s get this guy up to date on movies!”

He led the way to the common floor, excited to see Thor’s reaction. Watching movies together had been fun, each of them sharing a favorite movie of theirs.

Tony had offered to let Clint and Thor stay for the night, and both had refused.

“I have obligations on Asgard,” Thor said. “Especially now that Loki is imprisoned. I will come here next week for training though, and the movies were fascinating!”

“I have obligations elsewhere,” Clint said. “I will turn up early next time so we can talk about handholds for the suit and the new arrow ideas that you had.”

“Even Natasha is staying here!” Tony said, “I figured that if anyone was going to refuse to stay here, it would be her! It’s not like you’ll be paying rent, that was covered when you saved Manhattan from aliens.”

“I told you Tony,” Clint said, looking exasperated. “I have obligations elsewhere, you won’t convince me to stay in the tower anytime soon.”

“Be aware that I’m taking that as a challenge.”

“I wouldn’t expect anything less,” Clint said. “I’d better get going though.”

“You’d better,” Natasha said. “You’re already late.”

Clint gave her a kiss on the cheek and stepped into the elevator.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, Steve was trying to give Clint the air support that Bucky didn’t have.
> 
> But I have a lot of opinions on Bruce. So many people treat him like a doctor, but he is a physicist and chemist who did some work as a doctor in impoverished countries where having Bruce was a lot better than no doctor at all. For those of you who don't know a lot about science... they can overlap, but are very different!
> 
> The next chapter will be posted next Tuesday! Hope you enjoyed!


	3. Some backup

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And an incident

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... I completely forgot to post this chapter, and I’m technically posting this on a Wednesday but...

Bruce thought that the next practice was... odd. Steve had started the practice off with an odd idea, that he would be picking a backup leader.

“What?” Tony said, “you’re probably the least likely person to have to stay out of a battle!”

Bruce agreed, he didn’t get sick very often, but even when he was, the Hulk was perfectly fine. If Steve had the perfect version of the serum, then he would be even less likely to be affected.

“I know,” Cap said. “But I’m not invulnerable, and if I get taken out in the middle of a battle, then there will be a lot less confusion if we already have a backup leader. We can start with some one on one battles.”

“Makes sense,” Clint said.

“Who’s first,” Natasha asked.

Bruce stayed on the side with Steve, on the benches on the side of the gym. As the battles went on, Steve scribbled in a small notebook.

While Tony and Clint were preparing for their fight, Bruce asked nervously, “what about the Hulk?”

“Well,” Cap said. “At least part of my decision will be based on whether the Hulk will follow their orders. He follows mine, and we will be more effective if the person making the split second decisions will be listened to by everyone. I was thinking of doing it after everyone has fought each other. If you don’t want to do it now though, we can put it off...”

“It’s fine,” Bruce said. “That’s a good thing to know ahead of time.”

Steve blushed faintly, and said thanks. When everyone had fought, Steve stood up and said, “last, we are going to do a quick exercise, see how well everyone can get the Hulk to follow orders. Tony, do you have those large concrete blocks that I asked you for?”

“Yep,” Tony said, going into a new garage door on the wall.

“Bruce,” Steve said, “if you can transform please, we can get started.”

“Sure Steve,” Bruce said, focusing on the anger, that they had to fight at all, that it would probably never stop...

+-+

He came to, body aching, stomach churning.

The first thing he heard was Tony, who said, “I really need to make super stretchy pants for him. That would be a fun challenge.”

Bruce opened his eyes as he felt a heavy blanket being draped over him, Steve smiling at him from above.

“You alright?” Steve asked.

“I’m fine,” Bruce said, “I’m just cold and a little achy.”

“Let’s all go to the kitchen,” Steve said. “Get a snack so we can all refuel after that practice.”

They all made it into the kitchen, Bruce now in sweatpants and a loose long sleeve shirt, and everybody grabbed a snack.

“Ok,” Steve said, “the alternate, or emergency, leader is Clint. Natasha, with your skills and the possibility of needing an infiltrator at one point or another, it wouldn’t be a good idea to tie you to that role. The Hulk would... not be a good idea, and Thor might get tied down is Asgard, and is also one of our most... erratic fighters. Tony also mentioned something about him not being able to use a comm. Clint however, will often have a good overview of the battles, the Hulk follows his directions, and he has a good sense of strategy. Not to mention that he can strategize while he shoots. Tony, I didn’t choose you because you make a much better second. You aren’t afraid to dispute a bad call, you have the most knowledge of technology of any of us, and have the most diversity of attacks of all of us, so you can provide info on other options that the rest of us might not know of.”

Bruce blinked, shocked by how many good reasons Cap had for every person, and his obvious anticipation of Tony’s indignation. Historians were obviously right when they called him the greatest strategist of this century!

Everyone agreed that Cap’s idea for team composition was the best, and went back to eating.

“Tony, May I ask something of you?” Thor asked, surprisingly quiet compared to his usual booming voice.

“Of course Point Break,” Tony said, “what is it?”

“I was wondering if you would house my lady Jane and her friend and assistant Darcy. My father only let me have one day on Midgard a week so I could train with you. He wishes that I spend little time with Jane, but if she lives in the tower, then I could see her more often.”

“Have you asked them?” Natasha asked, “they might be fine where they are.”

“Of course I asked,” Thor boomed. “They were both honoured to possibly be invited. Darcy said that with how much “eye candy” there is in the tower, she would love it. Jane is excited to have the chance to work with such incredible scientists that also know about the unbelievable things of this world.”

“Wait,” Tony said, eyebrows raising. “Are you saying that your girlfriend is Jane Foster, like... the astrophysicist? I’ve read her most recent paper, she’s a genius!”

“I do know that she is a scientist,” Thor said. “She was gathering information for a paper on some of the anomalies that the invasion of Manhattan produced, last I visited.”

“I can send them my private jet so they can get here quickly,” Tony offered. “I’ll need to expand the lab though, probably need some new equipment too... JARVIS, send the jet for them.” He got up, heading towards the elevator.

+-+

Over the next few hours Bruce read some of Jane’s articles. Most of the science was out of his reach, but they were well structured. Well put together, with well gathered and organized information.

The source of the information was obviously Thor, and the things that happened around him, but before the invasion, it would seem like she got it from nowhere, making it impossible to publish properly.

When she arrived later that night, unfortunately after Thor had gone back to Asgard, Bruce had been alerted by JARVIS, and went to the lab.

“I can actually use this?” Jane asked Tony as Bruce walked into the lab.

“Yeah,” Tony said. “This is the main lab, anyone can use it. I have my own personal lab, specifically built for the kind of stuff I do, but this one is more of a general lab. If there is anything that you need that isn’t in here, just let me or JARVIS know so we can get it for you.”

“Thank you so much,” Jane said. “Wait, is that doctor Banner?” She rushed over and shook his hand. “I’ve read the paper you wrote before you got the Hulk! Your writings on the different types of radiation and how differently they interact with things was very interesting, and inspired me to make sure that I tested for as many different types of radiation as I could! It actually helped me with some of the theories that I had about Einstein-Rosen bridges!”

“Really?” Bruce said, “I thought it sounded familiar, but I completely forgot that it was from mine! I have a feeling that we will work together well.”

+-+

They almost missed the next training session. They had been so involved in their experiments that they had all lost track of time.

Bruce was glad that Cap had popped in to let them know that they were starting. Jane had decided to tag along as well, curious about the training.

“Ok,” Cap said when they were all in the gym. “We’re going to start with some one on one battles, then I figured we could try a three on three, if that’s ok with you Bruce.”

“Sure,” Bruce said, sitting on the bench on the side, where Darcy and Jane were.

“We’re starting this off Cap,” Natasha said. “We haven’t fought each other in way too long, can’t have you getting rusty.”

“Sure,” Cap said, “we can-“

He was cut off by Natasha lunging at him. He recovered quickly, and they began to fight properly. They fought almost too fast to see, flipping each other over almost too many times to count. Bruce found himself leaning forwards in his seat, in awe of the speed and skill in their movements.

After a bit, they separated, both panting slightly, and began to circle each other like big cats.

“I thought you were supposed to be a super soldier,” Natasha said, throwing a punch that Cap deflected. “Not supposed to get winded by the likes of me, an ordinary human.”

“As if you’re normal,” Cap said, rushing forwards, Natasha dodging it. “I went on a long run before this. I’m not done yet though.”

They leaped at each other again, panting hard. They fought quickly, Cap getting tossed to the ground somehow.

Cap leaped to his feet again, then wobbled, and collapsed to the ground again. Natasha walked over to him, and cautiously shook his shoulders.

He didn’t move, still gasping.

“Can you feel his pulse?” Bruce asked, hurrying towards his prone body.

“Yeah,” she said, hand to his pulse point. “He’s clearly breathing as well, he just... collapsed.”

“We should take him to the medical floor,” Bruce said. “Since he has the serum, anything that can take him out would have to be extreme.”

“I’ll take him there,” Thor said, hurrying over.

“Lift him carefully,” Natasha said. “He might have a head injury, or maybe even hurt his spine.”

Thor lifted him carefully, and began walking, slow and carefully balanced. Bruce ran ahead, with Tony.

“Did you have anyone vet some actual doctors?” Bruce asked “I have some experience, but not on anything like this, and nothing compared to a real doctor!”

“I haven’t yet,” Tony said, as the elevator raced upwards. “The medical floor isn’t finished yet, so I thought that I’d do it once it was done.”

“I can check for injuries,” Bruce said, running out of the elevator, feeling the Hulk stir, and trying to push him and the worry down.

“I can probably put in an IV if it’s been prepared already, for dehydration, but I don’t feel comfortable doing anything else, if I can even think of anything else to do.”

“I get the idea,” Tony said. “What do you need me to do?”

“Just grab a bed,” Bruce said, looking through the cupboards. “I’ll see what I can do.”

As Tony rolled a bed into an open spot, the elevator opened again, revealing Thor, who had Steve’s still unconscious body in his arms.

“Lay him on the bed,” Bruce said, “I’ll see if there’s any injuries.”

Bruce pulled on gloves and began to palpate his skin, searching for anything out of place, but keeping his clothes on.

The others piled into the room, hovering and looking worried. Pepper arrived as well, despite the fact that he knew that she was supposed to be working all day.

He didn’t find anything, and Natasha had said that she hadn’t hit him on the head, not done anything that could lead to that reaction.

“He was out of breath though,” Darcy said. “It could be as simple as not having enough air. He seems fine now, just unconscious.”

“But he’s a super soldier,” Tony said. “I know for a fact that he has way more endurance than any normal human, and shouldn’t pass out, even if he went for a run before that.”

“Didn’t he have asthma before the serum?” Clint asked.

“That would make a certain amount of sense,” Bruce said, stomach sinking. “It could be something else, but we should definitely bring in someone who knows what they’re doing either way.”

“Good idea,” Tony said. “I had JARVIS start running a background check on some doctors, but maybe while we wait we could get an x-ray or something done. That way we won’t waste any time when the doctor does come.”

Bruce’s heart rate began to slow, they had a plan now, and Cap seemed fine for now.

Then Cap began to stir, mumbling out a “wha... whas happenin?”

He sat up, swaying a bit, and looked around. “Why am I here?” He asked sounding much more alert.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wasn’t exactly sure about the science talk in this chapter, because physics is my least favorite type of science, but otherwise I’m proud of this chapter! 
> 
> I am changing the tags as I go, to reduce spoilers, so keep an eye out!
> 
> Sorry, not sorry, for the cliffhanger!


	4. Relief

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And worry

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The cliffhanger is resolved!
> 
> Just so you guys know, I will be starting a 3+1 set in this universe on Thursday, so keep an eye out!

Thor was glad that the Captain had regained consciousness, the worry of the others had made him worry. He had thought that of any of them, he would have to worry about the Captain the least, with how Asgardian his strength and endurance seemed.

“You passed out,” Bruce told the Captain cautiously. “As far as I can tell you don’t have any injuries, but we have don’t know what caused it. If it was something minor, the serum would have taken care of it, right?”

“Oh,” the Captain said, face twisting into an odd expression.

“We were thinking about bringing in a professional,” Bruce said. “If it’s serious enough that you fainted without warning-“

“There was warning,” Steve interrupted. “I ignored the signs, and pushed myself too hard.”

“That really shouldn’t be your limit,” Tony said. “If even half of what I’ve heard about the serum is true, then that is dramatically lower than it should be. Natasha has normal human limits and she outlasted you.”

“Yeah,” the Captain said. “It shouldn’t be my limit, but there’s... extenuating circumstances.”

“Is the serum going away?” Clint asked.

“How did you get that answer?” the Captain asked.

“You were out of breath before you fainted,” Clint said. “And I know that you had asthma before the serum.”

“Makes sense why you would think that,” the Captain said. “But that’s not why I fainted, it’s... weirder than that. I may as well tell you, but you have to promise to not interrupt, even if what I’m telling you doesn’t seem to be relevant.”

“If you’re sure that you don’t need medical care right now,” Bruce said. “I’m just glad that I didn’t have to do anything medical that I wasn’t sure about.”

“I nearly had a heart attack when you fainted,” Clint said. “If it means that I don’t have to worry about that again, I’ll listen to anything.”

The others all agreed as well, and the Captain began speaking.

“When I was eighteen,” the Captain said, “me and my friend Bucky decided to do something stupid. We... we bonded our souls. It was reckless, but we did it anyway-“

“You are soul-bonded?” Thor interrupted, unable to help himself, awed that he actually knew someone with a soul-bond.

“Yeah,” the Captain said. “You know what it is?”

“Of course!” Thor said, “it is very common in stories, a bond of devotion that lasts even beyond death!”

“You’re talking about magic,” Tony said dismissively. “There’s no way it can exist. Even you said that your powers were just unknown science! There’s no such thing as a soul, our brains just evolved until they were powerful enough that sentience was a byproduct, so that means that there is no way to bond what we don’t have together. And what does that even mean, that you bonded your souls? None of it makes any sense.”

“Just because my powers and the Bifrost have scientific explanations does not mean that there is no magic. The soul-bond is one of the few things that I know of that are magic beyond a doubt. Would you like to explain the effects Captain? You are the only one of us to have experienced one after all.”

“You can do it” the Captain said quietly. “I’m sure you have more specific knowledge than me.”

“If you wish me to,” Thor replied. “Most of my knowledge is from plays and stories, it is much rarer that an Asgardian will form a soul-bond because of our much longer lives, at least when I was on earth last. It has happened though, and there are many stories that feature one. If I get anything wrong, do not hesitate to correct me.”

The Captain nodded, and Thor continued. “The effect that I believe is the most relevant is that if the bonded pair is apart for long enough, or if one is dead, then there is physical decline, with many painful symptoms.”

“You’re right,” the Captain said, looking miserable.

“Then you have my most sincere of condolences,” Thor said, heart going out to him. “If I am correct in assuming that your Bucky is dead.”

“Yeah,” the Captain said dully, “he’s dead.”

“What kind of symptoms,” Natasha asked.

“Headaches,” the Captain said. “General aches, trouble sleeping, trouble breathing, I’ll probably start throwing up in a week or two, death eventually.”

“Why would anyone want to bond then,” Pepper said. “If you knew that you would decline like that...”

“We were reckless,” the Captain said miserably. “Bucky seemed to think that I would survive anything, despite how sick I was. Guess he was right.”

There was a moment of heavy silence, but Thor had something to add. “There were many advantages to a bond if the stories are right.”

He looked at the Captain for permission, and he waved him on.

“As far as I know, bonded partners can talk to each other in their minds, feel each other’s emotions and pain, and know where the other is.”

“He’s right,” the Captain said quietly. “It’s more just distance and direction, but...”

“You said that you deteriorate,” Jane said. “How long does that take?”

“I don’t know,” the Captain said. “I know that I’m getting the symptoms twice as fast now, as opposed to when he was just somewhere else. The longest we were apart was for four months, but if it had been much longer, I wouldn’t have been able to rescue him. I was only able to last that long because of the serum.”

“So the serum kept it from getting too bad,” Clint said.

“The serum slowed the symptoms down,” the Captain corrected. “It didn’t stop them from getting worse.”

“But...” Bruce said, looking confused. “If you have half the time, and last time was four months... how long has it been since you were... separated? We didn’t even notice that you were getting worse until you fainted.”

“Half a week before the ice,” the Captain said dully. “Three and a bit weeks after the ice and before Loki... and two weeks since the invasion.”

“It’s been only six weeks!” Darcy exclaimed, “and you’ve only been in this century for five weeks!”

“It doesn’t matter,” the Captain said sharply. “It’ll be two weeks until I don’t know what’ll happen, we need to prepare.”

“We can’t let you on the field if you’re going to faint,” Clint said. “That would be a major disadvantage.”

“I ignored the warning signs,” the Captain said. “It won’t happen again.”

Natasha looked at him sceptically, and the Captain said, “Natasha can test me every training session. She can make sure that I’m ok to be on the field.”

They all looked at each other, concerned, but they all agreed.

“We can try to fix it though,” Tony said. “It shouldn’t be an automatic death sentence. We can experiment, see what we can do to slow it down at least.”

“You can try,” the Captain said. “I doubt you’ll get anywhere, but you can try.”

“We might need to get an actual doctor in on this,” Bruce said. “Even if it isn’t necessary now, it’ll be needed once you get worse.”

“You’ll have to get them well vetted,” the Captain said. “If any enemy’s know that I’m weakened, they’ll be more likely to attack. We don’t want the knowledge getting into the wrong hands.”

“We’ll have to tell Fury,” Clint said.

“No,” the Captain said. “I’m not a part of SHIELD, and if he needs me for something, you can tell him that I’m not available.”

“If you’re sure,” Clint said.

“We can meet tomorrow,” Tony said. “In here at... maybe nine AM?”

“Sure,” the Captain said. “If you actually need that little time.”

“I have a question,” Thor said, apprehensive about the Captain’s answer. “Were you and your Bucky together? Like a couple?”

The Captain froze, going white, then sat up straighter.

“Yes,” he said stiffly. “We were together since I was sixteen. I don’t care if you tell anyone that I’m a fairy, I know you’ll all hate me now, but I don’t care. I’m gonna be dead in a month or two anyway, so you don’t have to have a fairy for Captain America.”

He stood up, baring his teeth in a twisted smile, and stormed out.

“What does fairy mean in this context?”

Thor was confused at the vicious response, like an animal caught in a trap. He had expected sadness or a non-answer, not the sharp anger.

“And why is he speaking of loving a man like it’s a bad thing?”

“Fairy is an old, insulting term for guys who like guys.” Darcy said, “you don’t care about that?”

“Why would I?”Thor said, “many Asgardians change genders like the weather. Midgardians change their genders so rarely, no wonder there is so much stereotyping and discrimination about gender.”

“Change genders?” Jane asked.

“Some more than others,” Thor said. “There are few that cannot change their bodies to match their gender, but that is rare, and is easily fixed by others that can.”

“You guys can change your bodies?” Bruce asked.

“Mostly small changes,” Thor said. “And it is dependant on how skilled you are at it. How could the Captain think that we would persecute him for liking men though? By your reactions, and everything that I have seen it is quite common, and even celebrated in some places.”

“You know how we told you that he was from a different time?” Natasha asked, “well it was bad to be revealed as gay back then.”

“It was illegal then,” Darcy said, looking up from her phone. “You could even be thrown into an asylum if you got caught!”

“We should probably go to the living room,” Bruce said. “It’ll be a lot more comfortable there, not as crowded.”

“I will go to Asgard,” Thor said. “It is unlikely that there will be a cure there, but I would like to try anyway.”

Everyone agreed, and made their way to the elevator.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah... so that happened. Poor Steve! Unfortunately he won’t be feeling better for quite a while... 
> 
> Hope you enjoyed!


	5. A depressing talk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And an examination

Once Thor had been sent off, Tony led them all to the common room, head spinning.

As they settled into the couches, Pepper asked, “what are you thinking about Tony?”

“It’s just...” Tony said. “If you felt even half this bad while I was dying... God, you deserve everything.”

“What are you talking about?” Bruce asked, looking concerned.

“I...” Tony said, not sure where to start. “About a year ago I found out that the reactor was killing me. The material it was made of was poisonous, but I couldn’t take it out, because that would kill me. I started giving away my stuff, throwing parties. I managed to find some research that helped me find a material I could replace it with something that wouldn’t slowly kill me. Pepper stayed with me through it all. No wonder Cap was finding a second in command last week.”

“So you think that he was preparing to die,” Natasha said.

“He definitely was,” Bruce said sadly. “And that’s not even mentioning the fact that he said that he died only a few days after Barnes did.”

“And that they were a couple,” Darcy added.

“Yeah,” Tony said. “And... the chance of having a quick and relatively painless death instead of a long and agonizing one? I can’t say that it didn’t tempt me once or twice.”

“So you really think that Captain Rogers could have tried... to kill himself?” Jane asked.

“It’s possible,” Bruce said. From what I understand, it was probably just a contributing factor though. He had a lot of reasons to crash the Valkyrie.”

“He was in this century for only three weeks and a few days before Loki,” Pepper said softly. “He barely had time to get used to this century before he was tossed into a battle with aliens, yet he somehow managed to pull you all into a team.”

“How was he even introduced to this century?” Natasha asked thoughtfully.

“We need to support him,” Clint said. “He was obviously really worried about us hating him for being in a relationship with Barnes, so we need to prove that we don’t care about that. If anyone’s opinion on him has changed because he’s not straight, please tell me now, he needs all the support he can get.”

There was a silence, but Tony said, “this isn’t me saying that I’m homophobic. I am surprised though, from the crazy amount of stories my father had about him, he and Cap were close, and Cap and Peggy were the perfect couple. If my father had any idea that Barnes and Cap were the couple... he definitely wouldn’t have worshipped Captain America as much.”

“He probably just misinterpreted it,” Darcy said. “But it doesn’t matter now. You should probably leave him alone for a while though, don’t overwhelm him with support. He doesn’t even know that it’s allowed. Just let him relax for a bit before you blow his mind.”

“He agreed to let us check him out tomorrow,” Bruce said. “We can talk to him then, make sure he knows that we don’t hate him for that.”

“Agreed,” Tony said.

+-+

That night, Tony called Helen Cho. From what he heard, she had been working on a machine to speed up healing, and he had even been looking into her for the possible eventual removal of the Arc Reactor.

She had been sceptical about his sanity at first, but even his bare bones explanation was too much of a temptation to resist, so she had decided to come.

Tony sent her a jet, and she would be there at eight, so they could explain better, and get a better idea of what needed to happen. Tony had told her to not go into the medical floor until they paged her though, so they could reassure Cap that they weren’t homophobic, without her in their business.

+-+

Tony and Bruce were on the medical floor, preparing the stuff that Helen had instructed, when Cap walked in. He was stiff, eyes darting between them, looking ready to bolt.

“Nice to see you Cap,” Tony said, then hurried into the storage room. He knew that Cap didn’t like his sense of humour, and he didn’t want Cap to bolt. He could still hear them though.

“Hey Cap,” Bruce said. “Just so you know, we don’t care that you like guys. Not one of the people in the room disliked you because you like guys. We were all definitely surprised, but none of us care.”

“You...” Cap said, sounding confused. “You don’t care? But... did you tell anyone?”

“Of course not!” Bruce said, horrified, “none of us would out you if you didn’t want us to. But even if we did, you’d probably get a lot of fans for coming out. It isn’t illegal anymore, and there’s even a gay pride parade in a lot of places. There are always jerks, but a lot of people wouldn’t care.”

“I’m bi,” Tony said, coming out of the back room. “I like both guys and girls, my father hated that, but the public knows and I’m fine.”

“Really?” Steve said, looking sceptical, “it’s really allowed?”

“Yeah,” Tony said. “Gay marriage is even legal in some places. No one here cares, and Dr. Cho, the doctor we recruited to help us with this, only knows that you bonded your “soul” with Barnes, and now that you’re separated you’re dying. She won’t tell anyone, she’s a fabulous scientist, and discreet to boot. JARVIS, tell Dr. Cho that she can come in.”

“Of course sir,” JARVIS said, and Cho walked in the door.

“Nice to meet you Captain Rogers,” she said, shaking his hand. “We should start with taking some blood so we can test your hormone levels, and see what we can find with an MRI. What symptoms do you have?” She asked, grabbing a syringe, and shooing Cap towards the table.

“Well,” he said, sitting down with a crunching of paper. “I get out of breath more easily, have trouble falling and staying asleep, dizziness, headaches, and a general ache.”

Cap pulled his arm away as Cho put her hand on his arm to take blood, but put his arm back, and she took some blood.

“You said that you’d start throwing up eventually,” Tony said.

“Yeah,” Cap said. “It’ll probably start happening soon.”

“Those sound like some nasty symptoms,” Cho said.

“They aren’t too bad,” Cap said. “It was a lot worse before the serum. Back then I had trouble breathing on top of my athsma, aching all over on top of my aching joints from the rheumatic fever, that kind of thing.”

Tony stared at him for a second, shocked by his nonchalance.

“You really were sick before the serum.”

“Yeah,” Cap said.

“You said that this has happened before,” Cho said, grabbing a pen and a pad of paper. “Can you give me an overview of timing and anything else that might be relevant?”

“Sure,” Cap said. “But all the symptoms but the throwing up came on so slowly that I didn’t really notice them.”

“That’s fine,” Cho said, “as much as you can remember.”

“Ok,” Cap said. “The first time, we were only apart for about three months, and I started feeling queasy around... the first week of the third month? I didn’t start throwing up until the third week though, I wasn’t moving a lot, so it was easier to ignore. Near the end of the third month I was bedridden.

The second time was about three and a half months. I wasn’t bedridden at all, and I lasted a lot longer before I started throwing up. I started feeling queasy during the last week of the third month, but I started throwing up by the first week of the fourth month. Probably because I was a lot more active. I haven’t been queasy yet.”

“How long has it been since you... were separated?” Cho asked.

“I was told that the symptoms would happen twice as fast when the other was dead,” Steve said dully. “It’s been about about six weeks, and so far it seems that it’s true.”

“Six weeks?” Cho asked, looking surprised, but quickly putting a calm face on again. “The serum affected the rate at which you got the symptoms right? And you could still destroy the Hydra base after three and a half months, which is a little bit more than where you are now if it’s only been six weeks minus your time in the ice.”

“Destroying the base wasn’t exactly hard,” Cap said. “I was pretty bad, but they weren’t expecting a single infiltrator, and I released the prisoners as well, and they weren’t expecting an attack from the inside either.”

“I guess that makes sense,” Cho said. “But when you saw each other again, all these symptoms just... went away?”

“Not exactly,” Cap said, looking embarrassed. “When we saw each other again we... we needed skin contact. Got fixated on it until we got... enough of it I guess. It took a lot longer to not need it anymore the second time, probably because we could only hold hands while we walked back.”

“Huh,” Cho said. “That’s something to keep in mind. Let’s get you in the MRI machine, see what we can find.”

“There’s one in the back,” Tony said. “It should work fine.”

“Perfect,” Cho said. “Now, to prepare for this procedure, the machine uses magnets to get the image, do you have any metal in your body?”

“I don’t think so,” Cap said. “I’ve gotten some metal in my body before, but I’m pretty sure that they got it all out. I could be wrong though.”

“Ok, so you will need to change into a gown so we can make sure that you don’t have any metal on your clothes, we’ll make sure that the machine is ready while you change. You can just come in when you’re done. Come on Tony, Bruce.”

They went into the adjoining room, and Cho began to fiddle with the machine, obviously just using up time.

When Cap came in the room, wearing the gown, he looked ridiculous. His ridiculously broad shoulders strained at the fabric, but the rest of it draped loosely, barely even touching the rest of his body. Tony even got a glimpse of his (perfect) ass.

Cho’s eyes widened, but she quickly recovered. “Ok, so for this procedure you will be on this table as it moves. The machine makes a lot of noise, clangs and thumps, and you will need to stay perfectly still. I could get some headphones if you’d like?”

“I’ll be fine,” Cap said. “Thanks for warning me, but I’m used to sudden loud noises.”

They went out of the room, and during the procedure he was surprisingly still after his initial startle. When he stayed still after the MRI had finished, eyes still open, and breathing calmly and steadily, Tony went to shake him out of it, worried.

Cap quickly jolted up, blinking quickly like he had been woken up. “Oh,” he said, looking blearily at Tony.

“What was that,” Bruce asked. “Were you sleeping with your eyes open?”

“Kind of,” Cap said, looking dazed. “Was just thinking, starting to drift off.”

“In that noise?” Cho asked, looking very surprised. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen that happen.”

“I’m a soldier ma’am,” Cap said. “Learned to sleep through anything, including bombings.”

“If you say so,” Cho said, sounding dubious. “But I should have all the information I need. These two should probably be able to get more blood and take more MRI’s. I’ll definitely need a progression to be able to figure out what’s killing you, partially because I don’t know what your average is for any of these.

From all the papers I’ve read about the super soldier serum, it’s assumed that you are very different from us, almost like another species! In short, I’m going to need a lot more information to be able to try and do anything, because I’m almost certain that your body is almost... attacking itself, like an autoimmune disorder. It’s definitely not any virus or bacteria, and if it can be resolved so quickly, it’s unlikely to be problem of a specific body part...

Sorry, I got distracted. Anyway, I’m going to need a bit of time to even get an idea of what I’m dealing with, much less try to get a cure, but I’ll try my best. I guess painkillers wouldn’t work well for the pain.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Cap said. “Your best is all you can do. It was nice to meet you though.”

“It was nice to meet you as well,” Cho said, and headed back out of the room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! I hope you enjoyed this chapter. As you might be able to tell, I very much dislike how few main character type women there are in the MCU, so I’m introducing quite a few side characters that are women. Cho won’t play a major role in the story, but I will (eventually) post a one shot with her POV, and a more in depth explanation of the science behind the bond and its effects. (As you might be able to tell, I love biology)
> 
> Stay safe, but don’t panic, in these troubling times. I love you and will be praying for you all!


	6. Steve’s horrible, terrible, no good, very bad day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The classic recipe, but now with even more soulmate angst!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning! This chapter includes a very depressed Steve, with mentions of suicide and vomiting. Steve is not in a good place mentally, and doesn’t feel like he has very many reasons to live. Read at your own risk! If you have any tags or warnings I forgot, please tell me!
> 
> Yes, the secondary title refers to food labels, I work at a grocery store and have seen way too many food packages. If I can’t make a weird joke like this, no one can!

Steve had two more examinations before the next practice.

Taking blood wasn’t too bad, he had gotten way too much blood taken after the serum, so he easily relearned how to not flinch from the needle.

The MRI was always awful though. With his enhanced senses, the rattling slams of the machine were impossibly loud, pounding into his head like a hammer. The sounds made him think of a bombing raid, making his heart beat way too quickly, and his entire body... itched almost.

The first time he had almost wished for the headphones, but they probably wouldn’t work well with his hearing, and he couldn’t show his panic about it. They depended on him to make sure they stayed calm about this, if he started panicking, then they would too, making it harder for them once he died.

Keeping still was easy after the first little bit though, just drifting away, disappearing into his mind, settling into the spot where the bond had been anchored. Pulling out of the stupor was hard though, the dregs of it often lasting for a lot of the next day, dragging him down, and making it easier to slip away again.

He hated when Tony tried to wake him up. He would steadily get more annoying, even getting to the point of shaking his shoulders. He hated that, the touch making his skin crawl, feeling wrong like almost everyone’s touches were, except for a select few people, almost all of which were dead.

He endured the examinations, even though he knew that they wouldn’t find a cure, because they needed to have hope.

Thor had mentioned the possibility of finding a way to break the bond, which might help with the symptoms, and he had agreed to let him search. If he did find a way though, Steve would refuse it beyond a doubt. Just the thought of breaking what bond remained made him feel more nauseous than usual.

+-+

When he got to practice, Natasha called him over.

“I’m testing you first,” she said. “Make sure that you will be allowed to fight before you start planning on being a part of training.”

“Fine,” Steve said, “may as well.”

They went to the mats, and began to circle each other. Steve knew that he was at a disadvantage, so he had to find the right opening to even get a chance at winning. She had regularly defeated him when he was at full strength, so this was probably near impossible.

He leapt at her, and they began to fight, fast and agile.

Natasha was good at keeping him off balance, and he didn’t want to actually hurt her, so he kept his moves careful, but with the moves that she had taught him, and all the time they had spent training together, he wasn’t doing too bad.

He knew that he needed to finish it quickly, his joints and muscles aching more than usual, and his lungs were aching with the effort of taking in more air. He began to feel sick, his stomach churning with every movement.

His gorge rose quickly, and soon his heaving breaths turned into gagging, and he threw up on the floor, falling to his knees.

Natasha stopped fighting, moving towards him cautiously.

“Well,” Tony said. “I guess you could use that as a surprise attack, I’d stop fighting pretty quick if anyone threw up on me.”

Steve knew that he needed to keep fighting though, he couldn’t become useless so early. They were already putting so much effort into helping him, the least he could do was to be useful in a fight.

The moment he stopped heaving, he hauled himself to his feet, and clumsily launched himself at Natasha.

She was obviously surprised, and he almost managed to pin her down with his strength and weight, but she quickly slipped out from under him.

“You don’t have to fight anymore,” she said softly, obviously pitying him.

“I can do this all day,” Steve panted, wiping his mouth with his arm, and launching himself at her again, still breathless.

She quickly pinned him though, his head spinning, and stomach churning.

“I was joking about continuing to fight,” Tony said into the silence.

“You aren’t on the team anymore,” Natasha said, still pitying him. “You did very well, but against multiple enemies you would be taken down easily. You’re at least a fourth of your normal skill level.”

“Ok Natasha,” Steve said quietly. “I’ll stay on the side, direct everything.”

“Good,” she said with an odd look on her face. He knew that she would never be convinced otherwise, that he would never be able to do anything useful again.

“JARVIS,” Tony said. “Send up the wet cleanup bot from the workshop.”

Steve made his way to the bench on the side, sitting down, his limbs aching.

He directed the team distractedly, making sure that Clint had the chance to make several calls. If he was going to be field commander, he would need to learn to lead, and to train the team.

The training session seemed impossibly long, Steve wanted to go onto his floor so he could just... not have to do anything. His head was aching, and tiredness was dragging at his limbs.

As they all cleared out at the end, Bruce stopped him. “Do you want to join us for a movie or two?” He asked, “it will be fun, I promise.”

“No thanks,” Steve said, knowing that it was only pity that made him ask, and if he got close to them, it would only hurt them more when he died.

“Come on Brucie,” Tony said, pulling Bruce into the elevator. “If he doesn’t want to have any fun, we can’t make him.”

Steve walked to his room slowly, every part of him aching, feeling absolutely miserable.

As he walked in the door of his floor he felt weird. It was like Bucky’s warm hand being pressed against his chest, warm and comforting.

It was in his chest, he realized, where the remains of the bond were connected. He walked to his bedroom, the tightness in his chest loosening, his headache receding.

He fell onto his bed face down in surprise as he realized something.

The bond... it was there, slowly coming into focus like it had been invisible all along and now it had been revealed. The hollow in his chest was filling, warmth in his chest like warm sunshine.

It was almost like... like Bucky was appearing at the other end of the bond, and his chest was loosening slowly.

He closed his eyes, dazed by the possibility. What if there was a chance- then the bond began to fade.

The hollow in his chest emptying again, warmth draining out. His chest got tighter again, lungs aching with the tightness.

It was gone.

The tiny fragment of the bond that had appeared, gone already.

Or maybe... maybe he had imagined it. He had seen soldiers fighting enemies that were just their friends, dodging bullets that had never been shot.

If it was his imagination, then how long would it be until he imagined Bucky? How long would it be until he went completely crazy? Would the team take him to an asylum? Or would he just disappear so that the public wouldn’t find out? He knew that Captain America was an important person, and any hint of him going crazy would be bad press.

Maybe imagining the bond being back was a symptom of being apart for this long, an inevitability.

His stomach growled, obviously needing food after he had thrown up all that he had eaten.

He didn’t want to eat though, just thinking about eating made him feel nauseous, and he didn’t have the energy to get up, much less to actually make some food.

He stayed in bed, slipping into the hollow place in his chest. He lost time, not having any clue how much flew past, his whole mind on the heavy lassitude in his veins, the heavy bluntness of his thoughts.

No wonder the others, especially Tony, thought that he was boring, that he had a stick up his ass.

He only had a month, maybe two, left at most, and here he was, wasting time feeling sorry for himself, wallowing in what he couldn’t change. Even if he couldn’t help train the other Avengers, he could start making preparations for his death, start organizing things with Fury, prepare a will so he could give charities some of the massive amounts of backpay he had been given.

He shouldn’t be so selfish and lazy.

Maybe if he hadn’t been like that during the war, then he could have done so much more in this body that had been gifted to him undeserving. He could have stopped more people from dying, maybe even stopped the war earlier.

He could have grabbed Bucky’s arm with his longer reach, but he had been stupid and underestimated the distance, and now... he might see Bucky once he died, if his selfishness, stupidity, and laziness didn’t doom him to hell.

Maybe if he had stayed in the time that he was supposed to live in, he could have stopped them from dropping the atomic bombs on Japan. He could have done so much good, but he was selfish and took the plane down, and now he couldn’t even go see the last remaining person that he had known.

To give Peggy hope by visiting her, then dying so soon after would be inexcusable, even if she would try to comfort him. Or maybe she would be angry, yell at him and hate him. He would deserve it. Making that promise to her, then breaking it and not coming back as soon as he knew that she was alive.

Maybe she had even realized that Bucky’s death was his fault.

His eyes were stinging, the side of his face itchy, and he realized that he was crying. Tears were soaking the pillow and irritating his face, his nose was dripping too, wrecking the pillow further, and irritating his nose. A headache was starting between his eyes, and his chest was aching.

He deserved it.

This pain was the least that he deserved for everything that he had done.

He drifted again, time sliding away from him, a low buzzing in his ears. He felt like he was slipping from his body, his soul trying to find Bucky’s again. Maybe he could follow Bucky after all, maybe he could go after Bucky like he should have when he flew the plane into the ice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just so you guys know, even though Steve thinks that he will go to hell for what he did, he doesn’t have the best understanding of Christianity. The only way you go to hell is if you don’t believe that Jesus died for your sins. No sin can make it so that you go to hell instead of heaven, as long as you believe that Jesus died for your sins. 
> 
> Hope you enjoyed this chapter!


	7. A new pain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And a new plan

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! I’m posting this chapter early because I’m really excited for this one!
> 
> Note:I made art for this chapter! It’s in the middle of the chapter, and is very sad and has torture sort of, nothing that should be too bad, but I thought I’d warn you guys just in case. 
> 
> It’s only the second piece of digital art I’ve ever finished, and the shadows were not cooperating, which led to me not having any shading, so it’s not as good as it could be, but I had fun making it, and I’m pretty proud of it, so I hope you enjoyed it!

Natasha was worried about Captain Rogers. It had been two weeks since he had been taken off the team, and he had only been getting more lethargic and miserable.

She had always prided herself on her ability to not care, at least on the outside, to look at the facts, and make sure that she had no visible weaknesses. Phil and Clint, and to a lesser extent, Fury, had been her exceptions. They had slowly worked their way into her confidence, and they could protect themselves, and hide their connections with her.

Captain Rogers was the exception. He had managed to worm his way into her affections so much quicker than anyone else, making him a very significant weakness, especially because he was going to die soon. He was just so earnest, yet so alone in the world, and him revealing that he was dying had only made her admire him more.

He was dying so fast and so certainly, he had every right to give up, use all of his backpay to do whatever he wanted, explore the world, party every night, go out in a blaze of glory, like Tony had tried to do. Instead, he stayed here, pulling the Avengers together, making them into an even better team, preparing for his death.

She couldn’t help but admire him for it. He still came to every practice, despite how hard it was becoming for him to move around, somehow both shaky and stiff at the same time.

They had invited Captain Rogers down for a late supper, despite him not wanting to watch movies with them earlier, because they couldn’t help but want to make what remained of Captain Rogers’ life a good one.

It was very likely that he wouldn’t come down though, he usually only came out of his room once a day, if at all. Despite all the effort Dr. Cho was putting into finding a cure, and no matter how many different things they tried, nothing had even alleviated the symptoms, and Tony and Bruce seemed more stressed than ever, knowing that their time was limited, and every successive cure was less likely to work, having started with the most likely cures first.

They all knew that Captain Rogers would be bedridden soon, he got out of breath so easily, walking was an obvious hardship, and he was throwing up quite a bit of what he ate. They were even talking about putting him on an IV, just so he wouldn’t die of starvation with how much he needed to eat vs how much he was throwing up.

Captain Rogers walked into the kitchen cautiously, looking stiff, sore, and exhausted.

“You alright Captain Rogers?” Natasha asked.

“As good as I can be,” he said, making his way to the food on the counter. He stopped there, oddly still, face twisted in confusion.

“Cap?” Bruce prompted, “you ok?”

Captain Rogers yelped, jerking backwards, eyes wide, then crumpled to the ground. He screamed, loud and wordless, like he was in pain.

“Cap!” Clint said, rushing forwards, but jumped back when Captain Rogers’ arm jerked towards him. His body began convulsing, jerking sharply.

“Grab a towel!” Bruce shouted over the screaming, running towards him. “Thor, help me turn him on his side!”

Darcy tossed over a towel from her place at the sink, and Thor ran to Bruce.

[link to picture](https://zupimages.net/up/20/15/u0tn.jpeg)   
  


Captain Rogers was still jerking violently, eyes rolling in their sockets, and voice starting to get hoarse and trail off. Thor managed to turn him on his side though, Bruce putting the towel under his head and neck.

“JARVIS, can you time it?” Bruce shouted over Steve’s voice, which was turning into something like a shriek, higher, and full of pain.

“I’ve already started Bruce,” JARVIS said.

Tony was typing furiously on his phone, looking for something to help, but managed to say over the noise, “if it lasts for more than five minutes, we take him to the hospital. That’s the recommended cut off point.”

All of them agreed, the only thing they could do was stand there, keeping watch, staying as close to him as they could get without being within reach of his flailing limbs. Captain Rogers wanted to keep him being sick a secret, but this... this was something that they couldn’t deal with by themselves.

All of a sudden Captain Rogers’ movements stopped, voice abruptly cutting out, until he lay quiet.

“What was that?” Jane asked, concerned.

“It looked like a seizure,” Bruce said. “I can’t be sure because I’m not a doctor, but from what I know of them it looked like one. I’m not sure if it’s a symptom of the separation or...”

Then Captain Rogers’ eyes blinked open, eyes glazed. “Bucky,” he said faintly.

Bruce’s face fell slightly, but said, “I’m not Bucky, I’m Bruce. Do you know what year it is Cap?”

“Bucky,” Captain Rogers said again, eyes looking clearer, and voice more frantic. “I can feel him, oh my god I can feel Bucky.”

He sat up, swaying. “Bucky, I need to find him!”

“Cap,” Bruce said softly. “I know you may think you can feel him-“

“I can,” Captain Rogers said, staggering upwards, and almost falling over.

Thor caught him, but Captain Rogers continued, “I can feel him, I know it! He... he was scared, and then he was in pain. He... must have known that it would hurt.”

He looked almost child-like in his confusion, wide eyed with sadness, so shaken by the idea that Bucky would be in pain. 

“Captain Rogers,” Natasha said carefully. “You said that you could feel his emotions and thoughts. He died before you even went into the ice-“

“He didn’t,” Captain Rogers said dully. “He didn’t. Before I crashed, I could feel where he was and the bond between us. I couldn’t feel his emotions or thoughts, but it was the same as when he was unconscious. When I got out of the ice... I couldn’t feel where he was. They lied.”

“Who lied,” Pepper asked softly.

“We sent out a team,” Captain Rogers said, still sounding dazed. “We sent them to look for his body. They gave me his dog tags, told me he was dead.”

“But you think that you can feel where he is,” Bruce said. “Can you give me the direction and distance?”

“I don’t know the distance,” Captain Rogers said dazedly. “We never measured it properly. It’s maybe... a fourth? as far as camp McCoy, but in that direction.” He pointed.

“But I know it was him, it would be impossible for me to have bonded someone else and not known it, and how else would I have felt it like that?”

“JARVIS?” Tony asked, “can you get me an idea of where he’s referring to? Prioritize big cities, more people there, more likely that he’ll be there.”

“With a large margin of a few hundred kilometres,” JARVIS said, “the most likely place is DC. It’s in the exact right direction, and with a one hundred and thirty kilometre margin of error.”

“That’s definitely convincing,” Bruce said. “But it’s very likely for it to be a coincidence. It’s possible that seizures are a symptom of your separation though, and maybe it caused you to believe that you felt him.”

“What’s he feeling,” Natasha asked, curious, and also seeing how worn out he looked, like he was about to cry.

“I don’t know,” Captain Rogers said dully. “The farther away we are from each other, the weaker the feelings are. He... he was so scared. I don’t know what he’s feeling now. He... his left shoulder hurts,” Captain Rogers said softly, putting his hand on his shoulder. “It... it aches. It feels like it’s pulling on my spine. It hurt worse than anything else when he was hurting.”

“Thor,” Jane asked. “Is there any way that this could be faked? Even if you don’t know a lot, it’s a lot more than anyone else.”

“I don’t believe so,” Thor said. “But if it was, I can’t think of any reason why they would do it. First of all, if anyone were to fake it, there would be none more likely to see through the ruse than a soulmate, who would know the normal course of their thoughts and feelings. Second, the only user of what you call magic that I know of, that also knows the Captain would be Loki, who is in a cell in Asgard, and thus cannot cast spells. Last, I cannot think of a reason that anyone would do it, except for possibly luring someone somewhere specific.”

“So magic is almost definitely not an option,” Bruce said. “So it’s either that Cap is imagining it, or he isn’t. Either way, we shouldn’t do anything.”

“What!” Captain Rogers said, sounding desperate. “I have to go to him! I have to make sure that he’s safe!”

“Cap,” Clint said. “If it’s in your head, it won’t help anything to go to the place, but if it is real, there’s every chance that he will come to you.”

“Or,” Captain Rogers said. “If it’s not real, all we’ll waste is some time, and if it is real, then he’s probably been captured by the Russians since he fell, and maybe he can’t come to me!”

“But say he did survive,” Tony said. “Then why was he dead when you woke up, but is now alive? And how did you only just figure out where he was when you felt his fear?”

“I didn’t,” Captain Rogers said. “I felt it once I woke up from a short nap, but... I had felt it before and it had always gone away. This time... it didn’t go away.”

“So either,” Pepper said. “You’ve had this hallucination before, or he’s “woken up” before. This could go either way.”

“Maybe there’s a novice necromancer out there somewhere,” Darcy said jokingly. “Practicing their necromancy powers and probably failing a lot.”

Natasha could see the misery in Captain Rogers’ eyes, so she gave a quick glare to Darcy, who flinched from her gaze. “How about we wait for one day,” she said. “If you still feel him, and he doesn’t come find you then we can try to find him. We can be more sure about it’s viability, and use all of our resources to assist. Until then however, we are going to stay in the tower.”

“I have to go,” Captain Rogers pleaded. “I need to find him.”

“JARVIS,” Tony said. “Captain America is to be restricted to the tower for now, keep him from leaving.”

“What!” Captain Rogers said desperately. “But-“

“If he starts getting hurt again,” Tony said, a bit softer. “Tell us and we’ll see if we can find him. If he isn’t getting hurt, then we can wait until we’re more sure that it isn’t just in your head.”

Captain Rogers looked like he was about to protest, but grudgingly agreed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first part of this chapter is what inspired this entire series.
> 
> I had the vivid scene idea of Steve being able to feel Bucky’s pain, not knowing that Bucky was alive, and Bucky getting wiped, with the Avengers watching on, having no clue what was happening.
> 
> Around 35,000 words, several maps and/or diagrams, and a piece of art later, I finally get to this scene. ...I may have gone slightly overboard😬


	8. Hope, celebration,

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And a deadly assassin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hopefully you guys got the notification that this chapter is now properly up!
> 
> For those of you who haven’t seen my note, I didn’t post this chapter on Tuesday like normal, because I worked late and was exhausted. Future chapters might also be delayed because I’m very busy at home, and work is only getting busier! I will try to get chapters done on time, but it is very likely to happen again.

Clint was worried about Cap, who was pacing around the kitchen, not staying still for a second. He was still breathing heavily, in pain, obvious because of his stiff movements. The news that Barnes was alive seemed to have given Cap a burst of energy, and he refused to eat, clearly barely aware of the team, and too jittery to sit down and eat. The team as a whole had decided to have a sleepover in the living room, both to make sure that Cap wouldn’t try to bolt, and to keep him company in his stress.

The others had left Clint and Tony behind to keep an eye on Cap and try to get him to eat something. Tony had stayed in the kitchen, mostly focused on his tablet. Clint knew enough about him, (through both his own observations, and fragments that Natasha had let him find out) to know that he cared so much more than he showed, hiding it very well. He also knew Natasha well enough to know that she cared much more about Tony than she let on, and that the fragments that she let slip were to keep him from hurting Tony. Tony was exhausted from putting so much effort into helping Steve, drooping into the table, almost asleep.

Eventually Cap flopped on the couch, still breathing heavily, and he curled into a tight ball, but his eyes were open, looking glazed.

Clint realized that tears had started down Cap’s cheeks at some point, and he looked so... young. It reminded him of Cooper almost, when he had gotten that miserable flu, been constantly tired and miserable. The flush on his cheeks from crying and pressing his forehead into the cushions didn’t help in making him look less pathetic.

If he was this miserable now, when he was certain that he could feel that Bucky was alive, how devastated would he be if it turned out to be a hallucination after all? Clint couldn’t help the urge to give him a hug, to give him some comfort in this crazy circumstance.

He couldn’t imagine thinking that Laura was dead, then finding out that she was alive, long after he had resigned himself to the fact that she was dead. The way Cap had talked about Barnes made it seem like real love, like the kind that he and Laura had grown into over so many years.

How old was Cap though? He was pretty sure that he and Barnes had been childhood friends, but if he had been in this century for only two months, then he was... only twenty six! That was college age in his head. He deserved some comfort while he would accept it.

That decided, he sat down next to Cap, and pulled a blanket over his trembling shoulders. He seemed to take a while to notice, pulling out of his daze.

“Wha...” he mumbled, looking up at Clint slowly.

“Do you want something to eat?” Clint asked, “even if he starts making his way here in a few minutes it will still take him quite a while to get here.”

“M’ not a charity case,” he said, voice thick with tiredness and tears. “I can do it myself.”

It reminded him of Natasha oddly enough, the refusal to show weakness, no matter what, that they could do anything by themselves. Natasha had it well hidden behind pretending to be weak, then showing just how good she was. From her, it was a survival thing, having to fight for the Red Room no matter her condition. They only made sure that she would survive, nothing more, and she had also been punished for failing, no matter the circumstance.

He wondered why Cap would react like that to weakness though. The best way to fight the refusal to show weakness was to start with logical reasons to help, using reasoning like, I care for you and don’t want you to feel bad, would not help. Only when it was established that you cared for them, then they would be so much more likely to let you care for them. It had worked well for Natasha, helped by the fact that he hadn’t fallen for her seduction attempts, which had been her shield.

“I don’t want you fainting when he comes around,” Clint said, scrambling for an explanation. “If he cares for you even half as much as you care for him, if he finds you fainted on the floor with only us close, then he’ll probably be pretty angry. I’d rather have you there to make sure that he likes us.”

Cap looked at him for a while, obviously analyzing him. Then he quietly said, “I feel pretty nauseous, I’d rather not eat.”

“I would feel a lot better if you had some calories in you. How about you drink some Gatorade, it won’t disturb your stomach as much, but you’ll still get some calories, and some electrolytes to boot.”

“Fine,” Cap said quietly. “But I’ll get it for myself.”

He wobbled as he stood up, nearly overbalancing, but he caught himself on the couch before he could fall. “I’m fine,” he said, despite the paleness of his face.

“Ok,” Clint said. “Just let me know if you feel like you’re going to throw up, I’d rather not get thrown up on.” Clint knew that if Cap were anything like Natasha, then he would be more likely accept a selfish reason than one of caring.

Cap hobbled to the fridge and grabbed a couple of Gatorades, barely managing to not overbalance on his way back to the couch. Once he sat down again, he pulled his knees up to his chest, and wrapped his arms around them, curling into a tight ball.

Half an hour passed as Cap slowly drank his way through two bottles, and Clint silently thanked JARVIS, who was probably keeping the other Avengers back, making sure that Cap got the chance to rest and be taken care of without anyone badgering him over it. He knew that Cap seemed determined to not show weakness, even with his body deteriorating so quickly, the reaction to Barnes being alive one of the very few exceptions, and the fact that he was letting Clint see him faltering was an honour.

To know that he was trusted, that he was allowed to see him at his weakest and take care of him, however minimally, was a balm to his soul. Laura and the kids had been helping him, and his therapist was an incredible human being, but knowing that he was trusted with the leadership of the team and like this by the most politely prickly person in the tower, all after he had done so many bad things made a lump come to his throat.

He stayed seated next to him, knowing that if Cap chose to lean on Clint, the kind touch would make a world of difference. Cap had yet to lean on him, but was slowly drifting sideways, when he stiffened, jolting up. Clint leaned forwards, ready for a puking fit, but it didn’t happen.

“He’s moving,” Cap said quietly. “I... I think he’s moving. I’m not close enough for him to be just moving around the room, he has to be going somewhere. I’m not sure yet if he’s moving in this direction but...”

“Thats good,” Clint said.

“I’m trying to tug at the bond,” Steve said. “Make sure that he knows that I want him to come here.”

“Good idea,” Clint said, noticing the probably unconscious need for affirmation of some kind. “It’ll be a good idea to make sure that he knows he’s wanted. You’ve described the bond like that a couple of times, so it’s like a thread between you?”

“Yeah,” Steve said. “When... when I couldn’t feel him, it was like all I could feel was the connection point, not the thread.”

“That’s awful,” Clint said. “No wonder you thought that he was dead. Is he tugging back though?”

“He tugged back once,” Steve said. “But he didn’t do anything after that.”

“That’s weird,” Clint said.

“Yeah,” Steve said. “He’s definitely coming this way, but... I don’t know. Everything’s weird.”

“It definitely is,” Clint said.

They relaxed together for a few minutes, and the rest of the Avengers came in, dressed in PJ’s, and bringing piles of pillows and blankets. As the noise level rose, Tony woke up with a snort, almost falling out of his chair.

Clint could see Steve’s posture changing, his voice firmer and more stern than it had been.

He told them the basics of what had happened, and Thor said, “with every second it seems more likely that it is real! I am glad for you Captain!”

Everyone gathered around, making themselves comfy, and settling in for a long night of waiting.

“Cap,” Tony said. “During the examination didn’t you say something about when you two got together after a long time apart...”

“Yeah,” Steve said, blushing despite his stoic face. “When... when we saw each other again, we... we needed to touch each other, skin to skin. When that happened everything else goes away. We barely noticed anything else.”

“So...” Darcy said, wriggling her eyebrows. “We should clear out unless we want to see some hot sexy times?”

“No!” Steve sputtered, blushing even redder. “That’s not-it’s not-why-“

“Somehow I get the feeling that Cap would rather not talk about that,” Clint said firmly.

“Yes please,” Steve said, voice muffled by the hands over his face.

“You should go to your floor once he gets closer,” Bruce said. “It would be a bit more private.”

“Good idea,” Steve said.

“JARVIS,” Tony said. “I want you on high alert. If you see anyone that looks like Barnes, alert us immediately.”

“Of course sir,” JARVIS replied.

“How long do you think that state of... distractedness will last,” Pepper asked.

“Ummm,” Steve said thoughtfully. “The longest it lasted before was about two? Three days? But it got weaker the longer it went on, so we weren’t out of it for that long. I’m pretty sure that it lasted that long only because the only contact we could get was holding hands.”

“If it does last longer than you think it will,” Natasha said. “Because we have no clue how the ice affected it, would it be ok if we came in occasionally to check in on you, make sure you’re eating? You haven’t exactly been eating as much as you needed to for a while, I’d rather not risk it.”

“Ok,” Steve said grudgingly. “As long as we don’t get watched.”

Clint saw Darcy prepare to make a comment, but Natasha glared her down.

“How about I do the monitoring,” JARVIS said. “I can make sure that you are eating, but any footage or information that is gathered through the rooms sensors will immediately be encrypted. No one else will be able to access the information except for the two of you, and anyone else you allow to see it. No one will not be able to access it without your explicit consent, but I will still be able to alert the others if you haven’t been conscious enough to get food for yourselves.”

“That’s a good idea,” Steve said.

Hours passed, people dozing off gradually, occasionally coming awake again, as Barnes got closer. The closer he got, the more jittery Steve got, until he was practically vibrating out of his skin.

“Sir,” JARVIS said, jolting the few that were dozing out of their trance. “I have a match to James Barnes on the street. It seems that he was not imaginary after all.”

There was a rousing cheer through the entire room, and Steve relaxed slightly, the smallest smile on his face.

“Why don’t you go to your floor Cap,” Clint said. “You should get a private reunion.”

“Ok,” Steve said, hobbling his way to the elevator.

Only a little bit after he had left, JARVIS interjected. “Sergeant Barnes seems to have gone into the building right next to Stark tower.”

“What?” Jane said, saying what all of them were thinking.

“Maybe he misjudged where Cap is?” Tony said, “maybe all those years in the ice made the tracking function glitch?”

“I will keep an eye out for him sir,” JARVIS replied.

There was a stiff silence taking over the room, all of them worried about what this might mean, if something was wrong.

JARVIS spoke up again, “Sergeant Barnes is on the roof of the building that he went into, would you like a visual?”

“Of course,” Tony said. “Put it on the TV so everyone can see it.”

The screen lit up with a zoomed in visual of Barnes on the roof. He was wearing a dark hoodie, and in the process of putting down and opening a full duffel bag. He shrugged off the hoodie he was wearing, revealing what looked like a tac shirt, but with one sleeve cut off, revealing a left arm that glinted in the light, that looked like silvery metal. Then he began digging in the duffel bag, showing the red star on his shoulder.

The room was silent in surprise, but Natasha said “no,” it was quiet, but desperate, and when Clint looked over at her, he saw that she was very pale.

“This can’t be Barnes,” she said, loud enough that the others began to look at her. “There is no way that the Winter Soldier is Bucky Barnes.”

“The Winter Soldier?” Clint gasped, remembering the frantic research spree that he had helped Natasha with after she had gotten shot by him.

“He has the metal arm,” she said. “It’s the only one that I’ve ever seen.”

Clint realized something, “Cap said that Barnes’ left shoulder was aching, tugging on his spine. If the arm goes all the way to the shoulder, then, depending on the metal, it might be pretty heavy...”

“Why is this such a thing?” Pepper asked, “how do you know him?”

“The Winter Soldier is the most brutal assassin of this century,” Natasha said, watching the Winter Soldier grab knives and guns, strapping them to himself, as she looked hypnotized into stillness.

“He’s killed over fifty people in fifty years. A couple years ago, I was protecting an engineer and he shot me.”

She pulled up her shirt a bit, exposing the scar. “He shot right through me, killing the engineer with one shot. He’s unstoppable.”

“How is this possible?” Tony asked the air, as the Winter Soldier leapt to the tower and began climbing.

“Sir,” JARVIS said. “This person is a ninety nine point nine percent match to Sergeant Barnes, with an acceptable deviation for aging.”

“Maybe they found a doppelgänger,” Tony said. “JARVIS, activate program nine-“

He was interrupted by Steve’s voice coming through the speakers, “no, no no no...”

“Steve,” Clint said, noticing how frazzled and exhausted Steve sounded, so unlike the cautious hope in his voice when he went to his floor. “What’s wrong?”

“They hurt him,” Steve said tearfully. “He doesn’t know his own name and...” Steve paused, hiccuping out sobs. “He... he... Hydra sent him.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I planned out this story, I definitely didn’t expect to have nearly as much Clint and Steve friendship, or comparison of Natasha and Steve, it just... happened!
> 
> Sorry, not sorry for the cliffhanger, and I hoped you enjoyed this chapter!


	9. A reunion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hopefully without murder

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those of you who may not have seen it yet, I posted last weeks chapter the day after it was supposed to go up, and I’m not sure if anyone got the notification. If you haven’t read last weeks chapter, please do!
> 
> Shorter chapter this week, but I hope you enjoy!

Steve could feel Bucky coming closer, his chest feeling lighter with every second that passed, with every inch closer that Bucky got. He was sitting on the rug in the middle of the room, he was jittery enough that if he sat on the bed, he’d probably be bouncing before long.

Then, he could feel Bucky properly, but nothing felt right. He was met with an odd blankness, almost like what he felt from Bucky when he was sniping, and occasionally when he was fighting. It had been pretty rare back then, and now it somehow felt even emptier than it had ever been.

Bucky pushed, ‘error, Asset maintenance required.’

‘Bucky!’ Steve pushed, surprised by the fear and resignation behind the words, so hollow and... robotic.

‘Possible alias Bucky,’ he pushed. ‘Not assigned an alias for current mission. Current designation, the Asset. Current mission, kill as many Avengers as possible. Hail Hydra.’

The words felt like a shot to the gut, like all of his guts were being pulled out with a fishing hook.

“JARVIS,” he said, the words far away like they had been spoken by someone else. “Contact the others.”

He could feel the tears rolling down his cheeks, Bucky couldn’t be Hydra, there was no possible way that he could have joined them, especially after everything they had seen them do. It was impossible-

“Steve.” Clint said firmly, breaking through the fog a bit. “What’s wrong?”

“They hurt him,” Steve managed. “He doesn’t know his own name and he... he... Hydra sent him.” He couldn’t help the sob ripping through his throat.

“What!” Jane said, “I thought that you took them all down!”

It only made him feel worse. It was all his fault, if he had just tried harder, made sure they were all dead before he took the plane down...

“Can you give us some more information?” Natasha asked, “so we can figure out what we’re dealing with?”

“He,” Steve gasped out. “His thoughts are so... robotic.”

“Robotic?” Tony said, “can you give me an example?”

“When, when he came in range he said, error, Asset maintenance required. And... and when I called him Bucky,” Steve said, starting to cry again. “He said, possible alias Bucky, not assigned an alias for this mission, current designation, the Asset.”

“That...” Tony said. “That does not sound like someone with free will. That sounds like a robot.”

Steve couldn’t help the sob that came from him, chest and lungs aching. He began to tug at the bond again, at a loss of anything else that he could do.

‘Error,’ Bucky pushed, getting closer.

“He’s still dangerous,” Natasha said. “He may have been your soulmate before, but now he’s something else. You need to come down here, so we can keep you safe from him. Somehow I doubt that he came here to see you again. I’ve met him before, he’s an assassin, you can’t trust him!”

“No,” Steve said. He wouldn’t fight Bucky, or let anyone else fight him, no matter what happened. “I’ll be fine, JARVIS can let you know if I’m in danger.”

“I can do that,” JARVIS said. “If you seem to be in distress, I will alert the others.”

“He’s dangerous!” Natasha said, sounding almost scared. “We have to protect you from him!”

Steve heard the window opening and turned towards it. He saw Bucky there, his beautiful blue grey eyes peeking over a black mask, long, deep brown hair like chocolate cascaded over his face and shoulders. He climbed in the window, looking at Steve with an intense stare like a cat stalking a mouse. His left arm was exposed by his tight fitting leather jacket of some kind, showing a metal arm, all the way to his exposed shoulder, a red star on the ball of the shoulder.

Steve touched his own left shoulder, feeling the deep ache in it, pulling at his spine. No wonder it was aching, with an... oddly familiar chunk of metal hanging off his shoulder. He could see multiple weapons on Bucky, several guns, and probably more knives than he could see.

‘Bucky,’ he pushed. ‘It’s so good to see you again.’

Bucky paused in his slow stalk, and pushed, ‘the Asset is to be feared. The Asset is to be a ghost, not be expected.’

He stalked closer, looming over Steve.

Steve lolled his head back, both to be able to see him still, and to make sure that Bucky knew that he wouldn’t attack. He wouldn’t fight anything that Bucky did to him, even if it was to kill him. It was what he would deserve after all, letting Bucky get captured by Hydra, leaving him there for whatever they did to him, not even attempting to look for him himself...

Bucky stayed there for a while, almost looking through him rather than at him, but pushed ‘you are different. You are... important.’

‘Can I take your mask off?’ Steve pushed, ‘I want to see your face.’

‘Why-‘ Bucky pushed, cutting it off quickly, projecting fear strongly.

He was scared of asking questions? Steve pushed reassurance to him, pushing ‘it’s fine, you can ask me questions. I want to know what you’re thinking, and if I have permission to touch you.’

‘Permission is not required for Asset maintenance,’ Bucky pushed tentatively, sounding like a question.

‘I want to know anyway,’ Steve pushed. ‘I want you to be happy.’

Bucky paused for a moment, but agreed cautiously, bending down slightly. Steve managed to find the strap and pull the mask off.

Bucky’s face was the same, maybe a little thinner, but with the same soft lips and gorgeous cheekbones. His hand began to drift towards Bucky’s face slowly, awed by the proof that Bucky was here and young, just like him.

The moment Steve’s hand touched his cheek however, the need began, a fierce desire to touch, to be skin to skin. Bucky straightened up and stepped back in surprise, a hint of fear coming from him.

‘It’s ok,’ Steve pushed. ‘We just need to touch to stop it.’

He could feel Bucky’s urge to bolt, to retreat and regroup. Bucky pulled the glove off his other hand, and touched Steve’s face.

The pure relief from the touch was surprising, and Bucky’s pupils blew, Steve’s heart pumping faster. He could feel Bucky’s desire in the pit of his stomach, cut through with fear.

‘I won’t do anything you don’t want me to do,’ Steve pushed. ‘All I want is to be touched as much as possible, and for you to be happy. You can do anything you want.’

He could feel Bucky’s stomach lurch, and a vague question forming. ‘Yes,’ Steve pushed, the desperation for Bucky’s touch, even just a hand on his cheek, was only getting worse as they stayed there.

Bucky surged towards him, tearing off his shirt with one quick yank, and shoving him to the floor. He shoved his face against Steve’s, cheek to cheek, and spread his hands over Steve’s chest.

The metal hand was a bit cold, and didn’t bring as much relief as the flesh one, but it was relief nonetheless. Steve pushed a wordless pleading towards Bucky, desperate for more of that relief, but desperately worried about making Bucky scared of him. Bucky tore off his jacket and Steve’s pants, as Steve kicked out of his shoes.

Then Bucky wrapped himself around him, covering every possible inch of his body. All he could do was to luxuriate in Bucky’s touch, wrapping his arms around him.

Eventually Bucky seemed to get frustrated and wriggled out of his pants, kicking off his shoes in the process. The only clothes they had on was their underwear and socks, touching each other everywhere, relief spilling over his skin like cool water during a fever.

Time blurred, but he could feel his stomach growl, and his mind slowly began to clear.

He realized that he could hear the door opening, and then a sudden fear and protectiveness from Bucky. He got rolled over, Bucky covering Steve’s body with his own, pulling a knife from the discarded clothes.

“Cap.” Natasha’s voice came sharply, “are you ok.”

The effort it took to say it out loud was so much more than he expected, but he managed “m’fine. Don’ need to be rescued.”

He could feel Bucky’s growl vibrate through his chest, and the sound of two glasses getting set down.

“You’ll need to eat,” Natasha said cautiously. “We got some smoothies for you two, don’t get too distracted to eat.”

Steve hummed a vague affirmation, giving a shaky thumbs up in the direction her voice had come from. Bucky relaxed once the door had closed.

‘Food,’ Steve pushed. ‘We need to eat.’ He managed to get his hand around one of the glasses without tipping it over, but Bucky grabbed it before he could get his mouth around the straw he could hear against the side.

He pushed a weak protest at Bucky, but he pushed ‘poison’ at Steve and took a sip.

‘I’m resistant to poisons,’ Steve pushed. ‘And if they really wanted to kill us, it would have been easy with us being this distracted.’

Bucky didn’t answer, handing him the smoothie he had sipped from, and grabbing another. Steve gently rolled them both to their sides so they could drink their smoothies without choking.

Once the smoothies were gone, the haze swept back over them, time disappearing again.


	10. An interview

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And a ‘arm’full problem

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I almost completely forgot to post this, but at least I'm posting now!
> 
> This chapter is in Pepper’s point of view, but I couldn’t get her to sound right. I hope you enjoy it anyway!
> 
> Edit: when I posted this I left in a filler word for a word I had forgotten. I have now changed that to the actual word!

Pepper had been very worried about Steve when they had seen the Winter Soldier climb into Steve’s window, but JARVIS had been very calm about it, and made sure that they all knew that Steve was perfectly safe.

Natasha had barely believed him however. Clint had barely managed to talk her down from charging into Steve’s floor, and fighting the Winter Soldier. She had been pacing the floor ever since, sharpening knives, and loading guns, all big enough that it seemed impossible that she could fit even one on her person.

When JARVIS had announced that Barnes and Cap needed to eat, and weren’t making any attempts to get food for themselves, Natasha had volunteered to take the high-calorie smoothies that Bruce had made to them.

Pepper had decided to make a job description while they waited for something to happen, if Barnes was going to be sticking around, then he would need all the help that he could get.

“JARVIS,” she said. “Get me a list of therapists within about... an hour or two drive. Make sure to remove any that are homophobic, likely to be tempted by money, power, or fame, or with ties to any organizations that are on our “do not associate with list.” Prioritize anyone who has been associated with Stark Industries in the past and proven trustworthy. Also, prioritize anyone with combat training.”

“What are you doing?” Tony asked.

“Well,” Pepper said. “If Steve was right, and Barnes’ thoughts are that... programmed, then he will probably need a lot of therapy to get back to normal. I’m not looking for anyone to be his long term therapist, we just need to get a better idea as to what we can do to help. We can’t have anyone who will say anything about him to anyone else, especially if Hydra is alive and well.

I’m pretty sure that the only reason that Steve could tell that he came from Hydra was because he could hear his thoughts. If we have a source of information, and they don’t know that we have one, then we have the advantage. But if we have someone tell them that we know, we won’t have the advantage anymore.

Combat experience would be nice as well, just in case something goes wrong. Barnes may not attack Steve, but anyone else might get a different reaction.”

“He’s an assassin!” Natasha said, with more emotion than Pepper had ever seen from her. “He was the boogeyman of the Red Room, they told us to stay obedient or the Winter Soldier would get us! I’ve had experience with him, and it matches the stories they told of him, that he’s a ghost, remorseless, unstoppable, and unforgiving. You will never escape if he’s on your trail.”

“Natasha,” Clint said. “I can understand why you don’t want him near Steve, but from what JARVIS said, he didn’t even attempt to hurt Steve. It’s unlikely that he was here for any reason other than an assassination, but he didn’t even try to hurt Steve. You are very biased.”

“I know,” Natasha grumbled, stalking off.

+-+

Several hours later, Pepper had sent out the offers, offering a meeting during the next evening for any takers. She fell asleep at three in the morning, with her first (business) meeting at nine o’ clock in the morning.

After a long day of meetings, she checked her emails, and found out that only five people had taken up the offer. Many of them had probably thought that it was a prank or something. She had agreed to have the interview process filmed, with the rest of the Avengers watching, so that everyone else could analyze their reactions, make it as foolproof as possible.

The first four were average, nothing particularly special, decent interviews, but nothing stood out. The last interview was for Samuel Wilson, a former user of the Exo-7 Falcon wingpack. There had been no leaks about the program, and everyone that had worked with him had nothing but positive things to say about him. He had even recently quit his job to move to DC, though he seemed to have no plans to go immediately. He had the time necessary to make the commitment, that would drag on for an unknowable amount of time, because they had no clue how much help Barnes was going to need.

Samuel walked into the room a minute late, saying, “sorry I’m late, the subway took a lot longer than I expected.” He was wearing nice, but casual clothes, a well fitted button up, and kakis.

“It’s alright Samuel,” Pepper said, “happens to everyone. Now, this job is highly classified, so you will not be told the full extent of the job unless you get it, and you will need to sign an NDA as a precaution.”

“Just call me Sam,” Sam said. “And I guess that’s something you need to think about, but I probably should have expected that, with how the request itself mentioned secrecy... well it’s probably for someone important.”

“Good instincts,” Pepper said, staying quiet so he would continue talking.

“But,” Sam said, looking like he was bracing for something. “I know that this is the opportunity of a lifetime and all, but I doubt that I’m the right person for the job. I didn’t get the best SAT scores or GPA, and I only have experience with ordinary PTSD ridden vets. If they’re someone important enough for all this secrecy, then I really don’t have the kind of degrees that they would probably appreciate, and if it’s anything to do with the Avengers, then I really don’t have the kind of experience you might need. I’m truly honoured that you reached out to me, but I’m not qualified. Someone else would probably be so much better for them.”

“I appreciate your honesty,” Pepper said, thinking quickly. “I may as well keep you here for a bit though, that way I can take a break without people hounding me to do things.”

“Fair enough,” Sam laughed.

“We may as well talk,” she said. “Now, you’re moving to DC soon, right?”

“Yeah,” Sam said. “I quit my job recently, but I haven’t found a place to live in DC yet. I’m staying with my family in New York for now, but I’m looking into some places in DC. I’m lucky enough to already have a job set up for me there, with the VA.”

“You must be good at your job if you have a job already set up there,” Pepper said. “What kind of military work did you do? From what I found, you were pretty skilled.”

“Yeah,” Sam said. “Unfortunately it’s all classified, but I was always better with guns than hand to hand.”

“You were also quite good with the Exo-7 falcon wing pack,” Pepper said. “It appears that it was quite difficult to control.”

“Oh!” Sam said, “you know about that?”

“Yes,” Pepper said. “With how discreet you are, you could easily get a job with Stark Industries. I would love to give you a reference.”

“That’s quite the test,” Sam said. “I would appreciate the reference, but I would prefer to stay with my current job, it’s pretty fulfilling, being able to help people the way I do.”

“I figured that I may as well test your discretion while you were here. I haven’t heard of any leaks, but... I figured that I’d check. Your time seems to be up though, it was nice meeting you.”

“Nice to meet you as well,” Sam said, shaking her hand and getting up. “Thank you for the opportunity.”

Once he left, Pepper went into the common room, where the others were gathered on the couches in front of the TV. It was still showing the now empty meeting room.

“We rejected Dennis for sure,” Natasha said. “And the others were decent, but Sam was exceptional. The fact that he cared enough about his possible patients health enough to refuse the, in his own words, “opportunity of a lifetime? And on the grounds that he wasn’t qualified enough for it? A very rare sentiment.”

“Especially when he has so much else going for him,” Clint said. “We didn’t find anything to be concerned about, loyalties wise. He also has lots of free time for the likely chance that it will take a lot of time to get Barnes even relatively stable. The others are good, but Sam is definitely the top contender. Good job at keeping him talking Pepper.”

“Thank you,” Pepper said. “But I think Tony has some information to share.”

She poked his side, startling him from his focus on his tablet. He had been looking in SHIELD’s files since last night, figuring that if there were signs of Hydra anywhere, it would be in a international spy organization’s files. He also still had access to their files from when he had accessed them before.

“So, uhh,” Tony said, refocusing on the group. “I looked through SHIELD’s files, looked up every Hydra leader from during the Second World War that I could find. Regular agents or soldiers could have just joined up as a job, and not believed in Hydra’s cause. The only high level Hydra people that didn’t die, get put in prison, or just disappear, were a few scientists.

The most high level of all of them was Armin Zola, who apparently worked pretty closely with the Red Skull. And from what Cap said in the reports that he wrote, he was the one that experimented on the prisoners that Cap rescued, including Barnes actually. Eventually they captured Zola and got some information on Hydra from him.

Once the war was over, they recruited him into the science division of SHIELD. But one thing that I found that was interesting, was a report from my dad. He worked in the same general area as Zola and didn’t like it, but he filed a report that he suspected that Zola stole something from his lab. There wasn’t any proof, and they didn’t search him, so nothing came of it, but my dad moved his labs after that. The thing that was stolen was a mechanical arm that my dad made just before the war. I looked up the blueprints for it, and it looked exactly like the images JARVIS caught of Barnes’ arm, minus the red star.”

“But if he made a mechanical arm that actually worked when attached to a human,” Bruce said. “Then why didn’t he make more? Or even release the design so that someone else could make them for anyone who lost an arm?”

“There was actually a reason for that, and it was why my dad didn’t try too hard to get it back.” Tony said, getting more excited. “Apparently, it was way too heavy to stay on any normal humans shoulder without pulling out of the joint, and the kind of stuff that would need to be done to get it to work with a human would need extensive, and highly risky surgery. In short, it wouldn’t work on anyone that wasn’t a super soldier, and even then, it was highly theoretical.”

“So let me get this straight,” Darcy said. “Zola, a former high up in Hydra, almost certainly stole a usable metal arm that only would only work on a super soldier, then along comes a super soldier with a metal arm who’s from Hydra.”

“That definitely makes it sound like Zola was using SHIELD’s resources for Hydra,” Pepper said.

“It’s likely that there are Hydra moles in SHIELD,” Natasha said.

“It’s best that we don’t tell anyone about this,” Tony agreed. “Especially anyone who’s a part of SHIELD, at least until we have more concrete evidence for any of this.”

Everyone agreed, and the meeting was over.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah... the metal arm that killed Howard Stark, was actually made by him! I figured that the arm would only be able to work on a super soldier, whether it was made by Howard or not, because then Hydra could have easily sold so many of them and made so much money for Hydra! It didn’t seem like that happened, because the arm was an identifying feature in the Winter Soldier movie, and why wouldn’t you at least use it on your agents, even if you don’t sell it.
> 
> But Sam is here! I didn’t want him to be relegated to just a therapist, and somehow being able to help with every mental health issue, so this is just how he’s introduced. Bucky (and Steve) will be getting proper therapists later (not in this story)


	11. A job

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And an unbelievable story

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn’t really have time to do as much editing as I would have liked, so it might be written weird, but I hope you enjoy this (longer than usual) chapter!

Sam was very surprised to get a call back. He was barely qualified for the position, if he was qualified at all, and he had even told them that. If they decided to hire him though, he wouldn’t exactly complain, the wage was definitely a plus.

The meeting was the next day, so he supposed that the need for a therapist was pretty urgent. The first thing that Ms. Potts had him do was to sign a very long and comprehensive NDA.

“Why was I chosen?” Sam asked, “I told you myself that I probably wasn’t qualified.”

“Well,” Pepper said. “Some of the information may seem unbelievable, and we are very concerned about keeping this as under wraps as we can. For the most part, we chose you because you proved to be incredibly discreet, and because you were available right away, and could be here for a while.

The other reasons are... related to who you will be working with. He is a brainwashed Hydra assassin.”

“Hydra!” Sam blurted out. “Like Captain America destroyed them all in World War Two Hydra?! And brainwashed? I have very little experience with brainwashing.”

“Yes,” Pepper said. “Hydra does still exist, but we don’t know how widespread it is, which is why we were so focused on your level of discretion. For your second response... well, we need someone to help him right now while we find someone who is more experienced, that also has the level of discretion that we need.”

“No wonder the interviews were so soon after the email,” Sam said.

“Yes, that was also a consideration, who would be available right away. You also have experience with combat, just in case you need to hold him off.”

“That’s a concern?” Sam asked.

“Possibly,” Pepper said wearily. “The reason we don’t know is because of the unbelievable part. For one, the Hydra assassin is none other than Bucky Barnes.”

“What!” Sam said, “but he died! And was captured and tortured by Hydra until he was saved by Captain America! He doesn’t sound like anyone who would join Hydra!”

“Not of his own accord,” Pepper said. “And that’s where the brainwashing comes in. But there’s some other unbelievable things about this situation.

According to Captain Rogers, when he and Barnes were both young, they somehow managed to tie their very souls together. Unfortunately, being apart causes their bodies to deteriorate, and would probably have killed Captain Rogers, but just two days ago, he felt some of Barnes’ pain. He made his way to the tower, but once he got in range to speak with Captain Rogers, it was found out that he didn’t know his own name, and was there on a mission from Hydra.”

“That’s... that’s crazy!” Sam said, “it sounds like the plot for a fantasy novel!”

“It does seem very unbelievable,” Pepper said. “But it was... very easy to see Captain Rogers decline in recent weeks, even with the serum slowing the effects.

But you should know, we aren’t one hundred percent sure when you will be meeting them. Captain Rogers told us, when he noticed that Barnes was coming this way, that when they met after a long separation, they would go into a fugue state of sorts, where they would be focused on getting skin to skin contact, which would slowly reverse the deterioration of their bodies. For the last two days they have been secluded in their room, and out of it enough that they needed food delivered to spur them into eating, though they have eaten on their own once or twice recently.

We don’t know if once the fugue state is over, Barnes will attack anyone, or if he won’t, and none of us has interacted with him at all really, so we don’t really have any idea how he will react, or when they’ll come out of the fugue state.”

“Huh,” Sam said, intrigued by the information he was getting. If Barnes was an assassin, then it was likely that he had come to the tower to kill someone, but if he hadn’t attacked anyone... “Any more info that you can give me?”

“They can talk to each other in their minds,” Pepper said. “They can feel each others emotions, feel each other’s pain, and know where to find the other.”

“But if they know where to find the other,” Sam said cautiously. “And if the bond is linked to their souls, then wouldn’t the soul go somewhere else after death, making it easy to tell whether he was actually dead or not?”

“You’d think so,” Pepper sighed. “But Barnes presumably died by being knocked off a high cliff, and the rescue team they sent brought his dog tags back to Rogers. He described the bond as a thread between them, and when he woke up, the thread was seemingly gone.

Apparently he felt the bond a few times after that, but the feeling disappeared quickly, so he figured that it was his mind playing tricks on him, until he got some of Barnes’ pain and emotions.

In short, none of us have any clue as to why or how. But another reason that we chose you, is because you were a soldier. We figured that Rogers would trust a soldier more than someone who wasn’t, so he would agree to this, and he could probably use some help as well.”

“Really?” Sam asked, this was Captain America they were talking about, and he had seemed fine in the interviews after the battle of Manhattan.

“Yeah,” Pepper said. “His main goal after the battle of Manhattan was to not tell anyone that he was dying until it was unavoidable, and to train the Avengers until he died.”

“Well.” Sam said, “that’s... something. But how has Barnes been acting? Do you know?”

“He’s been protective of Captain Rogers,” Pepper said. “JARVIS, the tower’s AI has been monitoring them, and he hasn’t tried hurting anyone, much less Captain Rogers. He’s actually been very protective of him, so protective in fact, that when the others go into their room to bring them smoothies to eat, he will cover him with his body, and grab a weapon. As far as we can tell though, he wouldn’t attack unless provoked, or Captain Rogers was threatened. It was mentioned by Captain Rogers that his thoughts were... robotic, almost like they were programmed into him.”

“Well,” Sam said, trying to put everything together.

“We aren’t expecting you to do a miracle,” Pepper said kindly. “All we want is a better idea of how to help him, and preferably have him able to choose a therapist on his own.”

“That’s a relief,” Sam said. “But I could use some time to think, put this all together and make a plan of sorts.”

“Of course,” Pepper said. “Honestly, I’m just glad that you didn’t run away screaming, this is pretty crazy when you think about it.”

“It’s not much weirder than actual aliens invading New York City, a giant green rage monster, or Norse gods that are actually aliens.”

“Fair enough,” she laughed. “JARVIS can guide you to the room that you can use. Good luck!”

She headed out the door, leaving him alone to worry. He, Samuel Wilson, was in charge of the mental health and recovery thereof, of two living legends and war heroes, one of which was a brainwashed assassin, who had been in the hands of his enemies for... as long as Captain America has been in the ice really, about seventy years.

He was really not qualified for this. Pepper herself had told him that she wasn’t expecting a miracle, he reminded himself. All he could do was his best, and that could only happen if he tried.

He made his way to the room he had been assigned, awed by JARVIS, who was just a computer, but sounded so... human. When he asked about furnishing the empty room, JARVIS had said that they had left it empty on purpose, just in case what he chose would help.

He was honoured, he had told JARVIS, but all he needed was a few comfy chairs, maybe a love seat, and some decorative items to make it seem less sterile. JARVIS guided him to the furnishings storage room, and pointed out anything that he might want. Sam used the effort of moving the furniture and arranging the room to bleed off some of the stress, he knew that the more nervous he was, the more nervous his patients would be.

“JARVIS,” he said once he had finished arranging the room. “You can tell them that I will be ready for them anytime now.”

“Of course,” JARVIS said. “But one thing, you will be monitored. Over the time that Captain Rogers, and now Sergeant Barnes, have been living in the tower, I have been watching over them. I have become very fond of them. If you hurt them in any way, or betray them to anyone, whether they are Hydra or the media, I will make your life miserable.

Everything is on the internet now, which I am quite adept at using, and Sir has many resources. I will not hesitate to use any of those resources to my advantage.”

“Wha-“ Sam said, in awe of the... emotion that JARVIS was showing. He had never thought that he would be threatened by an AI before, or at least, not one that was taking over the world. “I will keep that in mind, but I have no intentions to hurt them.”

“We will see,” JARVIS said, almost patronizing.

Sam couldn’t help but arrange and rearrange the pictures and cushions, until the door opened a few minutes later, startling him. He straightened up, and sat on one of the chairs.

They came in cautiously, the one who he assumed was Barnes walking in first. His hair was long and kind of scraggly, hanging in his eyes. The clothes he was wearing were obviously Cap’s, the sweats tight around his waist, and the T-shirt looking small on him. He was clearly ready to fight however, body tense, scanning the room, and settling on Sam, seemingly looking through him.

Cap came in behind him, gently tugging him towards the couch, but not before casting a suspicious look at him.

“Hi guys,” he said. “I’m Sam, did JARVIS tell you why I’m here?”

“Yeah,” Cap said cautiously. “You’re here to help Bucky.”

“Yeah,” Sam said. “I want to help, but to do that, I need to remember some things. Would you prefer if JARVIS recorded everything, or if I wrote down what I wanted to remember?”

“JARVIS,” Cap said.

“It will be under my highest levels of encryption,” JARVIS said.

“Sure. Now, I got briefed on your situation, with the two of you having bonded your souls together, but I’d like more information. Could you give me a general overview of the series of events? Maybe how the bond affects you physically?”

“Sure,” Cap said. “When I was eighteen, my Ma died. Me and Bucky were living together, and I got pretty sick. Bucky found someone that gave him the materials for a bond, he thought... thought it would help, and it did.”

“What kind of effects does the bond have?” Sam asked, looking at the confusion on Barnes’ face.

“We can speak to each other in our minds, feel each other’s emotions and pain... we can tell what direction, and how far away the other is.”

“That sounds useful,” Sam said, when he realized that he wasn’t going to say anything else. “What happened next?”

“A few years later,” Cap said. “Bucky got drafted, went to train at camp McCoy. We both got some side effects, but we both survived it.”

Then he turned to Bucky, and looked like he was talking on a comm, still paying attention, but his focus on something else. He was talking to Barnes.

Sam waited until their conversation had seemed to stop, then said, “can you tell me the effects of being apart? Are they the same every time?”

“Mostly the same,” Cap said. “The symptoms are trouble breathing, trouble sleeping, general ache, dizziness, and eventually throwing up. They were generally the same, but they showed up slower after the serum. The first time, I lasted three months before I was stuck in bed, but after the serum I destroyed a Hydra base after four months.”

“That’s quite the difference,” Sam said, calculating in his head. “But it’s only been a month and a half since the battle, and Pepper said that they found out because you collapsed.”

“Apparently it takes half as long to get symptoms when the other is dead or... whatever happened. It was three days after he died that I died, and I was in this century for three weeks before the battle.”

“Three weeks?!” Sam choked out. Steve nodded. If Steve had died only three days after Barnes had died... then the chances of it being purposeful were big, especially if he knew that he would die only a few months later. And the fact that he had only been in this century for three weeks before he fought a whole horde of aliens was incredible. How much had he suffered in this time?

“When did the other Avengers find out that you were deteriorating?” He asked as calmly as he could.

“A couple weeks,” Steve said. “We were doing team training once a week, so they figured it out pretty quickly. They really noticed that something was up when I fainted in the middle of a fight,” he said with a wry smile. “Everyone freaked out, so when I woke up I told them what they needed to know.”

“And they didn’t do anything to keep you from dying?” Sam asked incredulously.

“They tried,” Steve said. “Nothing they tried worked, just like I thought would happen. I let them try though, made them feel better if they were doing something to try and help.”

So Steve had only let them try to help him so they wouldn’t worry as much. He had been so resigned to his death, maybe because he had thought that he would die before, in the Valkyrie. He hadn’t even told anyone else until it was necessary, presumably ready to fight despite how bad off he was. It said a lot about how little he cared for himself, how ready he was to sacrifice himself, how much he valued others lives against his own. It was worrying.

“Can you tell me what happened when you found out that Barnes was alive?”

“Thought it was all in my head at first,” Steve said. “I could feel the thread of the bond, but I had felt it before. Never amounted to anything, always faded pretty quickly. I ignored it and went down for dinner, and...”

His voice trailed off, then sharpened, body stiffening, like he was readying for a blow. “He got electrocuted and I felt it,” he said, like he was reporting on a bad mission but couldn’t break down yet, all facts, and completely detached from emotion.

“I fell to the ground and almost passed out. No one let me go after him, but he came to the tower eventually, and we met again. And now you’re here.”

Sam was surprised at the vacant look in his eyes, how much he had to distance himself just to give a vague overview of what had happened.

Sam knew that this session was over, Steve was barely there, and barely knew or trusted him. He definitely wasn’t getting anything more out of him. He looked over at Barnes, who was glaring at his... shoulder, body tensed, looking ready to pounce at him.

“That’ll be all for today,” he said, watching the tension start to drain from Barnes already. “You can stay in here for a bit though, I have a few articles I’ve been meaning to read, and not enough time to read them, and if you are here, I can’t be made to do any more job related things.”

Before they could respond, JARVIS piped in, startling Barnes enough that he jumped up and pulled a knife out of nowhere. “Sorry for interrupting, but the Avengers would like everyone to report to the living room to make a plan for what to do next.”

“Me too?” Sam asked.

“Of course,” JARVIS said. “If you would like some time to put your thoughts in order though, you are not required to join.”

“I’d like to,” Sam said. “Clear my head a bit,” and keep an eye on Steve and Barnes, he added in his head.

It was obvious that Steve was shaky and possibly dissociating a little bit, and Barnes was easily startled and very protective. It would be best to keep an eye on them, and maybe get some more information on the whole Hydra thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hooray for Sam being here! I don’t have much experience with therapy, (on either side) so please tell me if I got anything wrong.
> 
> I feel like JARVIS is written weird, and I haven’t read enough fics where he does more than be a voice in the background, so if anyone has any tips on writing him, I would much appreciate it! JARVIS is very protective over his charges, and right now, that includes Steve and Bucky!


	12. Strategizing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And an overprotective assassin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So while I was writing the first draft, I couldn’t figure out what POV I wanted this chapter to be in, so I decided to leave that till later. ...I decided on the POV a day ago. Whoops!

Darcy was nervous. She was not qualified for this at all. Here she was, sitting on a couch in Avengers (formerly Stark) tower, about to have a meeting about what the Avengers were going to do about a massive conspiracy that involved Hydra, waiting for Captain America and Sergeant Barnes to come in so they could begin.

Why was she even here? Jane at least was a scientist, and girlfriend of Thor, and Pepper Potts was the CEO of Stark industries, and Tony Stark’s girlfriend. She was here because she had been Jane’s intern. It was nice to know that she was trustworthy enough to come to the meeting though, maybe they thought that she might have something interesting to say.

The door into the common room opened, and the therapist walked in first, followed by Bucky Barnes. She couldn’t deny that she had been attracted to him when she had seen him in their textbooks when she had learned about World War Two. He had been gorgeous. In some ways, he was very similar, with his gorgeous facial structure and eyes, only made better by not being in black and white, but he looked... ragged.

His hair was scraggly, he was wearing clothes much too small for him, and he almost looked like a wild animal, ready to tackle anyone who made a wrong move, eyes darting everywhere. Behind him was Captain America, almost completely blocked by Barnes’ thick body, and not making any attempt to change that.

“Finally!” Tony said, breaking the awkward silence. “We need to start planning what we’re going to do next, I found some more information. Blueberry?” He held out one from the package that he had been munching on.

Without any notice, Barnes flew into action, grabbing Captain America and hauling him into the corner of the room, then turning to face them with two knives that seemed to have come out of nowhere.

As Darcy’s heart began to race with fear, Natasha drew a gun and readied her Widow’s Bites, looking ready to leap.

“Stop Natasha!” Captain America said desperately, “don’t shoot!”

He tried to get out from behind Barnes, who shoved him behind him again, growling like a dog. “He’s only trying to protect me!” Captain America said, “if you don’t attack, he won’t!”

Natasha looked over him critically, tension rising as she paused, but she said, “he better not. I’m staying on guard, and if he attacks I will eviscerate him, that’s the best you’re getting.”

“Fine,” Captain America sighed.

Then Barnes inched forwards slightly, grabbed a stool just barely in reach, and passed it behind him so Captain America could sit on it, all without looking less intimidating.

In contrast, Captain America was looking over his shoulder from his place on the stool, oddly quiet and young looking. “What’s the new information,” he said quietly and almost shy, instead of the stern competency she was used to him talking with.

Tony began talking again, looking very confused, as Sam sat down on one of the chairs. “So, uh... to catch you up Cap, we figured out that SHIELD is probably compromised, with a few Hydra moles in there.”

“How do you know?”

“It’s kind of a long story,” Tony said. “When I started researching, I checked up on any Hydra agents that survived the war, see if there were any that could have continued Hydra. Most of them were either put in prison for the rest of their lives, died, or just disappeared. Those who didn’t were mostly scientists, but the one most likely to be the one that continued Hydra was recruited into SHIELD, and was pretty high up in the Hydra ranks if your reports are to be believed. His name was Dr. Armin Zola.”

“You’re joking.” Captain America said faintly, face going white, “why would they ever let him of all people into SHIELD?”

“He gave up a lot of important Hydra information,” Tony said. “Guess they figured that he didn’t have any allegiance to Hydra, and wanted his genius.”

“He tortured people and called it science,” Captain America said coolly.

“I agree that he shouldn’t have been brought into SHIELD,” Tony said. “But that’s in the past now. I figured out that he was still Hydra because of something that happened while he was in SHIELD. My father suspected that Zola stole something that he had made during the war, but didn’t have any proof, and it wasn’t exactly useful, so he let it go. Now, that item is here on Mr. brainwashed Hydra agent.”

“The arm.” Captain America said, “I should have recognized that earlier.”

“Yeah,” Tony said. “Anyway, since he was with SHIELD until his death in the seventies, so he had lots of time to influence potential Hydra agents, so I began looking into where your winter darling came from. I started with the van that he came from. It disappeared once it reached the highway of course, no cameras there, but since I had a good idea of where they were going, I managed to follow them through red light cameras.

It went into an abandoned garage in DC, but it was way too small, and had no signs of habitation besides vehicles coming in and out occasionally. The parking garage for the tower is underground, and comes out in a very discreet entrance so we can go in and out without attracting attention, so I figured that they might have the same thing, possibly leading to some of the other buildings. What do you know, all of the buildings in the area are owned by companies, that are owned by companies, which are also owned by-“

Pepper elbowed him, making him yelp.

“Anyways,” he said, rubbing his side. “After a while of that, they are owned by SHIELD. The thing is, one of those buildings have a much higher electricity usage than the others, and by a lot. Maybe a Hydra base level of electricity usage. The only thing that made it seem like it might not be the right place, is that there wasn’t an energy spike at the right time, ie, when Cap here was feeling a little electrocuted.

However, the place fit so well, that I decided to do a little bit more research. Apparently, a normal human can die with a shock of just thirty Watts, depending on where it is, that kind of thing. That is about equivalent to a laptop being plugged in, so even if he’s enhanced and he got a lethal dose for a normal human, it might not be visible on the record.”

“So you know which building is likely the base that he came from,” Natasha said. “We should go after it, get all the information we can get. But we need a way to hide our intentions, because as Pepper said, the longer we can keep them from knowing that we know something, the better things will turn out. If we just go after a SHIELD facility, people will get suspicious.”

“I thought of that,” Tony said smugly. “I’m very well known for going after terrorist hideouts with very little provocation or warning.”

“So if we could find some ties to one...” Clint said, “then we could have a ready made excuse. But if it was that public, we’d lose most of our surprise. If it’s obvious in the base that they’re Hydra, then they’ll know that we know.”

“But if they’re a secret in SHIELD,” Natasha said. “Then it’s unlikely to be obvious, with them in a SHELD owned base. They would need to expect inspections of one kind or another.”

“But it isn’t,” Clint replied. “They were obviously torturing someone at one point, and they needed whatever technology or whatever they needed to make sure that Cap couldn’t know that Sergeant Barnes was alive. It’s possible that they just took advantage of a property that SHIELD already owned.”

“How about a compromise,” Cap said, still quiet, but more confident. “We go in quietly, make sure there are no signs that it was us, but if we get caught somehow, then Tony provides whatever info he has on it’s relation to terrorists.”

“Makes sense,” Clint said. “If they’re a secret, they won’t ask for help from SHIELD, especially if we make sure that we make them think that it was just random infiltrators.”

“And afterwards,” Tony said, getting more excited. “I can get better surveillance in there, if I drop some bugs or something, get more info on members, plans, etc.”

“Can you make something that will take out all the electricity?” Natasha asked, “if we have night vision goggles, then everyone will be disoriented, and there will be no cameras.”

“We would have to take everyone there as prisoner,” Clint added. “Then we can get info and make sure that no one knows we did it.”

“Can you even be secretive Tony?” Darcy asked, contributing what she could, which was humour. “I saw you announcing that you were Iron Man on live TV, somehow I doubt that you’re good at being secretive.”

“I can so,” he said indignantly. “I-“

“You guys should probably do this whole thing tomorrow,” Sam interrupted. “I may want to have Hydra dead and gone as much as you, probably more, but I’d rather have this mission in the hands of someone who has had a full night’s sleep.”

“I agree,” Bruce said. “I’m pretty sure that Tony spent most of the night researching. If we do it tomorrow, then we have the rest of today to plan everything else, and maybe get the chance to check these two out medically.”

“So it’s agreed,” Clint said. “Me, Natasha, and Tony will infiltrate the possible base, making every attempt to make sure that they have no clue that we’re onto them.”

“Can I come on this mission?” Thor asked, “I would gladly destroy those who would do such horrors!”

Natasha and Clint looked at each other, obviously concerned, and Clint said, “umm Thor... that might not work out so well buddy. You’re kind of the opposite of subtle or sneaky. And that’s not even mentioning the fact that you are very recognizable as one of the Avengers.”

“I was not being serious,” Thor said with a grin. “I was only joking! I would be nearly useless on a mission like that!”

Jane began to snicker, obviously remembering the light show during the fight with the Destroyer.

Then Darcy began to giggle too, “I’m just imagining,” she snorted out. “You guys being all sneaky and shit, then Thor just... coming down from the Bifrost and electrocuting everything in sight!”

Everyone else began to laugh too, including Thor. All they could do was laugh, the act of looking up and seeing Thor just sending them into more hysterical giggles, until Darcy’s sides began to hurt from laughing so hard, and everyone was out of breath.

“We should get to the medwing,” Bruce said, catching his breath. “If we want Tony to get to bed for a reasonable time to get a full night’s sleep.”

“We can plan the main bulk of the mission while you do that,” Clint said. “As long as we can get all the information that Tony got on the place.”

“Of course,” Tony said, getting out of his chair and heading to the door. “JARVIS can give you access to the files.”

Then Captain America and Sergeant Barnes headed towards the door, Barnes keeping himself between the Captain and everyone else. It was then that Darcy realized that they hadn’t taken part in the hysterical laughter that had just erupted. There wasn’t a touch of amusement to be found in either of their expressions, and it made sense in a way; Captain America being all “stoic soldier,” and Barnes being a brainwashed assassin, but it was still weird.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you’re wondering why Steve is acting so out of character, the next chapter will be in his POV, so you can find out.
> 
> And in case you were wondering, yes, at the beginning I did make Tony accidentally channel Pierce (offering Bucky food that he thinks he isn’t allowed to eat) Sorry Tony!


	13. Steve angst!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Get your monthly dose of Steve angst here!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for: excessive recapping of previous chapters, depressed Steve, and dissociation.

Steve’s head was aching, his body feeling like pulled taffy stretched too far; thin and wobbly, not capable of much except for breaking. He could barely walk down the hall to the medwing without giving into the urge to lie down on the floor and go to sleep.

The session with the shrink had been much more exhausting than he expected. He had gone in preparing to just give the facts, maybe get some advice, and get out. He had been able to get out of his own required sessions without them tossing him in an asylum, so he had been sure that he would be able to get Bucky out pretty quickly. He couldn’t have them take Bucky away from him, do who knows what to him. He had seen the results of that kind of thing in Jamie, one of their friends from the queer clubs that they had gone to once or twice. He had gotten some kind of brain surgery, cut something out, and had never been the same.

And besides, Bucky was already getting better, remembering things that Steve had never told him, and being less tense, in their room at least. The shrink that SHIELD had gotten for him had always given him a bad gut feeling, the kind of feeling that he had learned to trust when he was a kid, and had only gotten more accurate after the serum. Sam hadn’t given him that bad feeling, but he was a shrink, probably had the power to throw Bucky into an asylum that he would never get out of, so it was best to be careful.

Telling Sam everything that had happened was surprisingly difficult, keeping some things under wraps, and reliving what had happened when he found out that Bucky was alive. He hadn’t had to think of it at all since it had happened, being more focused on making Bucky feel safe, and reliving happy memories from before the war. It had hit him all over again, the horror, the desperate, terrifying hope.

Eventually Sam was satisfied, and they had been ready to go to their room, spend some time curled up in their bed, warm and safe, calm Bucky’s worry. Then JARVIS had started talking.

Steve knew that the strategy meeting had been necessary, that he was weak to want to rest in between. Then, just before they had walked into the room, he had remembered that Bucky’s mission had been to kill the Avengers, of which all of them happened to be in the room.

He had somehow been fine at first, if cautious and protective, but then Tony had offered them a snack. He had no clue how that had triggered Bucky, but he had instantly gotten even more protective, and very angry, only barely holding back from attacking.

And then Natasha had gotten ready to attack, he had thought that her out of anyone would understand, with what little he knew of the Red Room, but she clearly had no compunctions about killing Bucky. Just the thought had made him nauseous, and trying to convince Natasha to back down, while keeping Bucky from going after them all was more exhausting than he ever would have expected, made him numb with exhaustion and melancholy.

At any other time he would have protested Bucky grabbing him a stool and protecting him like that, but he hadn’t been able to muster the energy to be mad.

It was only his tight hold on the bond that kept him upright and walking to the medwing. He could feel Bucky’s worry, ready to do anything to protect him. He needed to do this though, if Tony and Bruce saw the physical evidence of how much better he was, it could only be good. The less worried Tony, (and by extension, everyone else) was, the better the mission would go. If he wasn’t good enough to help with the actual mission, then he needed to do this, despite how much he hated it.

Then they stopped, the smell of disinfectant and his own stale exhaustion and anxiety indicating that they had arrived at the medwing. He could feel the fear rising in Bucky, and he tried to reassure him, tried to send him feelings of love and safety, but the numbness made the feelings weak and feeble.

“Ok,” Bruce said as they walked into the room. “I guess we can’t start with the MRI machine if Barnes arm is made of metal.”

“Metals can be non Ferromagnetic,” Tony said, grabbing a small magnet and tossing it to Bucky. He snapped his metal palm in front of them like a shield, and the magnet stuck to it with a click. “Looks like Edward Elric here won’t be going in the MRI machine then,” Tony said. “An X-ray could be good though, see how the arm is connected.”

“Let’s take their blood first so we can send the results to Helen as soon as possible.”

“Good idea Bruce,” Tony said, turning to the supply cupboards and rummaging through them. “Make sure he doesn’t try to murder us if we stick him with a needle Capsicle.”

Steve sat on the bed, tugging lightly on the bond, trying to reassure Bucky despite the numbness. Instead, Bucky stood in front of him, shielding him.

“So the murder bot wants to go first,” Tony said cautiously.

“Yeah,” Steve said, barely managing to unstick the molasses thick words from his throat. “He won’t attack you.” He hoped. Bucky seemed more protective than scared, standing in front of Steve so that if anyone got hurt, it would be him.

Bruce was careful though, did it quickly, but without any sudden movements. Bucky was only scared for a little bit when he got pricked, but felt confused when it was done. Steve wordlessly held his arm out for the needle, his skin crawling, even under Bruce’s careful hands, the sick feeling coming back.

“The X-ray machine should be ready now,” Bruce said, leading them to where it was set up. Bucky was mostly curious, not scared, and the many X-rays went smoothly.

“And now for the MRI,” Bruce said, leading them to the too familiar room off the main room.

He opened the door, and Bucky peeked inside, seeing Tony setting up the room. Steve felt a sudden spike of fear from him, quickly followed by dread and resignation. Steve tried to reassure him, but he was too numb, and besides, once it was done, Bucky would know that it was safe.

Bucky stuck to his side as he walked in the room, but Bruce said, “you can’t go into the room Barnes. Your arm is magnetic, and the machine has very strong magnets. If you stay in there while it’s on, your metal arm will probably rip out of your shoulder. You can wait outside though.

Bucky reluctantly walked out of the room, projecting love and care. Steve lay down on the table, the numbness heavy in his limbs and lungs. Bucky tugged cautiously on the bond, but it wasn’t enough to keep Steve from starting to drift away from his body. It was almost automatic at this point, just the act of laying on the bed enough to make him start drifting. It was easier that way, he moved less, and panicked less.

The machine started up, the rattling slams only making it easier to disappear, safely away from Bucky’s fear, and the impossible weight of his body. Then he felt a sharp tug on the bond, and Steve realized that the noises had stopped. It was over.

Steve was only vaguely back in his body, his senses, especially touch, barely there, his head stuffed with cotton. He tugged lightly on the bond to reassure Bucky, and Bucky pulled him up, gently tugging him towards the door.

“-tired,” someone said, sound going in and out. “Maybe-too much time-soundproofing last night.”

He could feel Bucky’s confusion, but it was distant, like Bucky was far away, but he couldn’t muster up the energy to be worried about that.

Suddenly they were in the elevator, Bucky said something, and he was picked up, cradled in Bucky’s arms. He was walking, the movement rocking him back and forth. Then he was placed somewhere soft, and Bucky left the room.

He was in his bed, he realized eventually, thoughts as slow and dragging as molasses.

Then a straw was pressed to his lips, and he could taste the nutritional smoothie that Bruce had made for them. Then it was finished, and as the world got darker and even more distant, he felt Bucky climb in bed behind him.

+-+

Steve woke up, aching all over, the sunlight burning his eyes and giving him a headache. He could hear JARVIS speaking in the background, the sound blurred, yet somehow achingly loud.

‘They are leaving now if you would like to go,’ Bucky pushed, obviously wanting him to say no.

‘I’ll go,’ Steve pushed. He needed to give them information that he hadn’t given them yesterday, too weak to manage it. He dragged himself out of bed, staggering, his head spinning from laying down for so long.

Bucky caught him, ‘can you make it to the main room?’ He pushed cautiously, ‘you were hurt yesterday.’

‘I wasn’t injured,’ Steve pushed, walking to the door despite his dizziness.

‘You weren’t,’ Bucky pushed, a hint of frustration coming from him. ‘I don’t know the word, but it was like you were injured but in your head.’

‘I can do it,’ Steve pushed. ‘I’m better today right?’

Bucky agreed grudgingly, and they got in the elevator.

“Nice to see you Capsicle, and your winter darling,” Tony said as they got out of the elevator. “Come to see us off?”

“Yeah,” Steve said. “And I have some information that I forgot to tell you yesterday.”

Clint and Natasha made their way over from where they were talking with Pepper. “When I fought Hydra in the war, most of them had a cyanide capsule in one of their teeth. Knock them out quickly, and keep them out until you’ve found it.”

“Good to know,” Natasha said. “We’ll keep that in mind. Any other tips? You’re the one with the highest score in Hydra whack-a-mole.”

Steve was confused, and his head was aching, but he continued. “They usually have back up plans for back up plans, they’ve had seventy years to plan this, and have infiltrated SHIELD. Be careful, and don’t put down your guard.”

“We’re ahead of the game,” Tony said. “We’ll get them for real this time. We’d better get going though, we have a long car ride to get through.”

They turned, and went to the elevator, down to the garage. They probably would do better at defeating Hydra than he had, Steve thought. They would definitely get them for real this time, without Steve to wreck their plans and slow them down.

“Hey guys,” Sam said as he walked into the room. “If you’re ready, we should probably start our session for today if you will follow me to the room.” Steve nodded, dread making his chest even heavier, and followed Sam and Bucky out of the room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You may be wondering why Bucky is so calm and collected, and Steve is falling apart. 
> 
> Basically, this is normal, or even not as bad as usual for Bucky. Not to mention he doesn’t have much of a context for why it would be bad. He’s regaining memories fast, but they are very distant, he doesn’t have much emotional connection to them yet. He doesn’t really think of himself as a person right now. He’s also in a new place, with lots of potential enemies, and a very strong instinct to protect Steve. It’s well known that the brain will often “put off” a breakdown until the person is safe, and then they will crumble, sometimes quite a while after the traumatic event. 
> 
> For Steve, it’s the opposite. Bucky’s always been a safe place for him, so he’s secure enough to break down. Not to mention, he hasn’t had much of a chance to deal with anything yet (has only been in this century for a few months, and was only alive for a few days after Bucky “died”)/completely ignored that he had anything to deal with. However, the return of Bucky has brought everything he was ignoring crashing down.
> 
> And yes, Bucky did think that the MRI machine was something that would hurt Steve, thank you for asking! Unfortunately he doesn’t exactly understand the idea of being able to say no, so he couldn’t really protest.


	14. Some interesting machines

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And an instruction manual

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit shorter chapter this time, but bring your tissues for the next chapter!
> 
> Warning for major dehumanization, and general Hydra being awful!

Tony hated car rides. He had argued that he could use the suit and meet them there, but Natasha had insisted that he ride with them. This one was boring, and even slower than he had expected, because they couldn’t speed even a little, which might draw attention to them.

He tried to keep occupied by researching the building and its history, trying to get an idea of when Hydra had moved in. The building had originally been owned by a different holding company, that was still one of SHIELD’s, but in 1991, it had been transferred to the holding company that owned it now, and renovations had begun. Then as fast as the renovations had started, they stopped, the outside of the building unchanged.

It was logical to assume that they had simply run out of money for renovations, but if they had completed what they had set out to do... The base had to have a lot of expensive technology, if Cap had thought that Barnes was dead even with the bond, then there had to be a reason.

As he ran out of new information, he started fiddling with a few designs, things he could do, even in the crazy jolting of the van. He couldn’t help thinking about Cap though, he had looked so exhausted that morning, and he had even dozed off in the MRI machine, which he thought was impossible with how loud it was.

In all of Howard’s stories, he had been the kind of guy that was always perfect in manners and anything he did; would never tire, never complain, never be weak in any way, and could always endure more. It had been so tiring to live up to that standard, but now Tony was seeing that Cap wasn’t perfect either, that he couldn’t just... endure anything forever. He did have limits and weaknesses, and one of those weaknesses was Barnes. He had showed emotions besides anger and determination, had let them see him unsure. It was... eye opening, and so different from both Howard’s stories about him, and what Tony had seen of him previously.

And it had been so crazy that he hadn’t had the time to tell Steve how his perspective had changed, how bad he felt for assuming so much about him when they had met. Half the reason he had antagonized him so much in the beginning was because he wanted to see him break that facade, even a little bit. This is why he wished humans had an instruction manual.

They got off the highway eventually, and began to make their way through the city. Tony wished that Rhodey was here, but he had been sent on a mission by the army. He had been at the tower for a little bit, two weeks after the battle of Manhattan, but he had been sent on another mission not long after. Rhodey had always been better at strategy and politics than Tony, and calming to be around to boot. He would probably be able to put together a list of people that were very unlikely to be Hydra.

“This is it,” Natasha said, breaking into Tony’s thoughts.

They pulled to the side of the road, and began to prepare. They were all wearing civilian clothes so they would blend in better, probably looking like vagrants in search of a place to hit up. They walked closer, making it into the open door of the building that had the large electricity usage. It was cluttered with the detritus of years of drifters and unsavoury types, trash everywhere, and Tony could even see a few needles glinting with the light from the door. Tony carefully made his way to the electrical panel, unlocked it, and attached the mini power surge machine he had made last night.

The faint lights in the panel shut off quickly, and Tony closed the panel for now. They all pulled on their night vision goggles and some gloves so they wouldn’t leave fingerprints, and headed to the walls, the room looking eerie in shades of green.

The back wall was closer than it should have been, making a secret room likely, so they began knocking on the wall.

“Found it!” Natasha hissed, knocking harder on the wall in front of her.

They gathered around it, Tony found the edge of the panel, and Clint and Natasha pulled it off. There was a staircase leading down, which they stormed down, hopeful that they could surprise whoever was down there.

Tony stayed in the back, having agreed to not use his armour unless it got really awful, or they were recognized, because the armour was so distinct, and the brightness of the repulsors would not help, especially because they were wearing night vision goggles.

When they got to the bottom, Natasha and Clint quickly took out the small group of disoriented soldiers in the room, and tied them up.

The area was otherwise quiet, a large room with a machine that kind of looked like a chair, but with attachments, in the middle of the room, a cage like wall protruding from each wall, looking like it could move to separate the room into two parts, and a few doors off of the room. There was also an entrance to a garage at the other end, a few cars taking up some spaces.

The first room they looked into was full of computers, a few other machines, and a few technicians, whispering quietly to one another. They all wore lab coats, and were poking ineffectively at the computers. Natasha took them all down easily in the crowded room, the blinded scrambling they were doing only hindering them.

“What do you want with us?” One sputtered, as Clint began tying them up.

“We won’t talk!” Another one shouted.

“We’ll see,” Natasha said as they went to check out another room.

It had clearly been a bathroom before, tiny, covered in tile, and had a few holes where fixtures had been pulled out. The only things remaining were a drain, a coiled hose in the corner, and rings attached to the walls, like something you’d tie a rope to to keep something in place. Maybe it was for cleaning equipment off? Either way, there was nothing there for them to get information from, so they went to the next room.

The only thing in it was a... coffin looking thing. Attached to machines, made of metal, but big enough to fit a human inside, with a tiny window on the front.

Tony went around it, trying to figure out the point of it, looking at the connection points.

“Tony,” Clint said, opening the front of it with a creak. “Look at the inside of the door.”

There were deep gouges in the metal, like something had tried to claw it open from the inside.

“Oh,” he said quietly. “Were-were they storing panthers in here or something?”

“It’s human sized,” Natasha said, coming up behind them impossibly quietly. “And any normal human wouldn’t be able to do that.”

“But Barnes is enhanced,” Clint said dully.

Tony’s heart skipped a beat, remembering how he had clawed at the soldiers taking him to the water, fighting, mindless with fear...

“What is it supposed to do?” Clint asked, jarring him out of the memory.

Tony looked at the small openings inside the pod, used for something obviously, but what? He opened up the back of the machine, looking at the connection points. There were tubes attached to it, leading to a large tank, which was connected to what was probably other tanks in the other machines. A way to make it portable, while keeping up the flow of... liquid nitrogen. Why would they need that?

They could figure it out later though, they still needed to explore the rest of the place. They went into the last room, that kind of looked like the weapons room just off the tower gym, but almost empty. There was also a small table with a few files on it.

Tony opened one of the files, and saw his own face staring at him. He flipped through the rest of it quickly, seeing every one of the other Avengers inside.

“This looks like a mission briefing,” Clint said. “About us.”

The implications were obvious. Barnes was an assassin that they knew had come from here. If they had been his mission... then Cap being his soulmate had probably kept him from killing someone.

“We’ll probably find more information on the computers,” Natasha said. “If they still have those files out, then the computers will probably have everything in them.”

They headed out into the other rooms, grabbing hard drives, and taking pictures of the machines from every angle because they definitely didn’t have enough room in the truck for any of the big machines. Eventually they had everything they needed, and they went to the vehicle entrance, dragging their prisoners along with them. Clint got into the passageway, driving the truck they had brought, and they loaded everything in.

“That was something,” Tony said, booting up his laptop so he could get a look at the hard drives. Once they got home, JARVIS would be faster, but he may as well get some work done at least.

Tony started skimming through the first hard drive. There were a few personal files, and some encrypted files that he sent to JARVIS to work on decrypting. There was also a file named Asset maintenance. Maybe it was for one of the machines they had found, with a vague name to deflect attention. There were multiple files inside of it, titled; removing from and returning to storage, maintenance, cleaning/fuelling, and mission preparation.

Tony opened the file on storage, intrigued by the idea that it might be dangerous in some way, and had to be stored to prevent damage to their soldiers. And both of the odd machines that they had seen were clearly meant to stay in one place.

The first part was a list of instructions, buttons to press, settings to change, etc, followed by the words, “storage container (see exhibit A) will take approximately fifteen minutes to defrost. Do not open too soon, or damage that will decrease efficiency might occur. Once defrosting is complete, (indicated by the red light on the panel flashing, and the door opening) remove the Asset from container. It will be stiff and unresponsive at first, but maintenance will return it to its previous skill.”

Tony scrolled to diagram A, and froze. It was a picture of the coffin like machine, the one that had claw marks on the inside, where they suspected Barnes had been in.

“Guys,” he said, feeling sick. “Look at this.”

They were stopped at a red light, so they could both see it, and he took the computer back as they started to move again.

“That’s a diagram of one of the machines,” Clint said. “Did you find out what it’s for?”

“Yeah,” Tony replied. “It’s in a file called removing from, and returning to storage, which is in a file called Asset maintenance. It says that-that “it” is stored in there, that it needs to be defrosted.”

They both froze, Natasha nearly rear ending another car.

“Everyone knows that the only way to store biological material and keep it in the same state, is to freeze it,” Tony said.

“He was just stored there?!” Clint asked incredulously, “did they just remove him when they needed him? Like an ice pack?”

“He has the serum like Steve,” Natasha said steadily. “He could have easily been stored like that for a long time.”

“And that would explain why Cap didn’t notice he was alive until now,” Tony said. “Apparently they can’t feel each other when they’re sleeping, and what is an ice coma but extreme sleeping? Not to mention that Barnes “died” in February, it would have made it easy for him to be preserved, make him last until Hydra found him.”

“What was with the name of the file?” Clint asked, “Asset maintenance? It sounds like an instruction manual for a machine.”

“That must have been what it was for them,” Tony said. “For the first part, I honestly thought they were talking about a machine, they used it instead of he, and files are called cleaning and fuelling, the storage one, maintenance, and mission preparation!”

“Maintenance,” Natasha said. “Can you look in that file?”

“Let me see,” Tony said, clicking on the file. “There’s two files, general maintenance, and mechanical maintenance, I guess that the mechanical maintenance would be for the metal arm, and general would be for everything else? In the general maintenance file is... I don’t know. There are a lot of instructions, and it would be a lot easier to understand if I knew what it does, but there’s a diagram of the chair like machine in it. It also... uses the words programming a lot, like he’s a robot or something.”

“Like how Cap described Barnes’ thoughts as robotic,” Clint said. “Maybe it’s that machine that somehow does it?”

“Maybe,” Natasha said. “But... if they can mess with his head that much, he... wouldn’t be at fault for anything he’s done right?”

“Definitely not,” Clint said. “But somehow, Cap managed to break seventy years of brainwashing with that soulmate bond and love. It looks like he was sent to the tower to take out all of us, and the closest he came to that, was when he freaked out during the meeting, and even then he didn’t even come close to any of us, much less attack.”

“See if you can find anything that mentions Hydra,” Natasha said. “With how vague the files are, I somehow doubt that they will be mentioned but it’s worth a try.”

“I’d rather not throw up in this van,” Clint said. “And if you keep reading out those maintenance files, I probably will.”

“Agreed,” Tony said, relieved, and began to change out the hard drive in the laptop.


	15. Sam is definitely not qualified for this

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And the Avengers weren’t prepared for it

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prepare your tissues! This is a sad (and long) chapter.
> 
> Warning for major dehumanization!

As Sam made his way to the room where he held the therapy sessions, he thought about where they would go from here. He was honestly more worried about Steve than Barnes at this point.

Yes, Barnes was obviously traumatized, and he was worried about what he had been told about Steve saying that his thoughts were robotic, but at the moment he seemed stable, if jumpy. Also, if he could hear Steve’s thoughts and feelings, it would probably make him more likely to start thinking of himself as more... human. The fact that he had been sent to this tower, probably to kill someone, but had only gone to Steve, and hadn’t attacked anyone? It was incredible, and Sam had definitely been expecting worse.

Steve however... Sam was worried. At the beginning of the session he had been taken in by the myth of Captain America, and expected Barnes to attack, and then Steve had started talking. Sam had started to realize how crazy Steve’s life was, and that wasn’t even counting the fact that the organization that he had died to stop was alive and well. Steve had obviously been exhausted at the end of the session, ready to go to his room and rest, but then the meeting had happened. Steve had been quiet, barely contributing, and all but hiding behind Bucky. Then he had been taken to the medwing, obviously out of it, and the next day at the send off, he had obviously just woken up, and looked like he had just barely scraped himself together.

He planned to give Steve a break in this session, ask Barnes a few questions, and end it there. Barnes had situated himself between Sam and Steve like usual, even more ready to attack than last time. They sat in the room, and once they were settled, Sam decided to ask his question.

“So Barnes, I asked Cap about his perception of events, what about you? What’s your take on this?”

Barnes looked confused, still not meeting Sam’s eyes, but obviously not understanding. “The asset does not need maintenance,” he croaked out, making it sound like a question.

“I’m sorry?” Sam asked, beyond confused. What did this have to do with maintenance? “Why do you think that you’re here?”

Bucky cocked his head slightly and said, “the goal of going here is asset assessment and maintenance. The asset is not in need of maintenance.”

“What?!” Sam said, trying to stay calm, “but... but why is Cap here then? If you think that you don’t need this, then he’s the only other person here, and he isn’t an asset.”

“He is,” Barnes said, slightly cautiously.

“What makes you think that,” Sam said, strangling his immediate reaction of saying ‘he definitely isn’t an asset, you’re wrong!’ He knew that Barnes had to have a reason for thinking that, and undermining his thoughts would only hurt him.

Steve’s eyes were wide, but he stayed quiet, luckily enough.

“He is not a handler,” Barnes said cautiously. “He is not a target either, and he is important. He must be an asset.”

“What other reasons do you have to make that assumption?” Sam asked, thinking. “There is no wrong answer, but can you tell me how many reasons you have?”

“Four,” Bucky said. “Because he has no name. The handlers have names, you have a name, assets have designations and sometimes titles.”

“What is his designation?” Sam asked, dread filling him.

“Captain America,” Bucky said. “Titles include Capsicle, Rogers, Captain, and Cap. Names are not permitted by handlers.”

“But you call me Steve,” Steve said, sounding devastated.

“I am also an asset,” Bucky said, looking cautiously at Sam. “And that is in the bond, it doesn’t count.”

Sam’s stomach was sinking, realizing that he had never called Steve by his name, that he was part of this... No. He hadn’t meant to do this, he had only meant to respect Steve by calling him Cap. He would do better in the future.

“So other assets are exceptions to the rules?” He asked, Bar-Bucky nodding. “Can you tell me the other reasons?”

“Assets are only interacted with when there is a mission or maintenance,” Bucky said quietly.

That was self explanatory, they had been holed up in their room, and had only been called out for planning the mission, being taken to the medwing, and therapy sessions. Sam did wonder how they could do that though, how often did Bucky go on missions with Hydra? And where did he stay when he wasn’t on one? The current mission to the Hydra base would probably help with that though.

“What is the next one,” Sam asked.

“Nutrition is given to assets, people get to chose what they eat.”

Sam looked at Steve, who somehow looked paler.

“Bruce had left over meal replacement shakes,” Steve said shakily. “From when we were out of it. It was easier than cooking how much we needed with our metabolisms.”

Sam understood that, remembering days where he just couldn’t, days where he was too tired, too jumpy, or just too miserable, to do the things that he needed to.

“That’s alright,” he said. “Eating like that is way better than not eating anything at all, especially if your metabolisms are as enhanced as your strength. But what is the last reason Bucky?”

He looked startled by the use of his name, (Sam felt like the worst kind of person) but continued. “Assets are not touched unless necessary, and maintenance is preformed no matter what.”

Sam’s stomach lurched.

“Maintenance,” he said quietly.

“Medical attention is done whether you feel comfortable with it or not.”

He remembered them being pulled to the medwing, both of them looking exhausted, and when he thought about it now, maybe resigned... “And that includes Steve as well,” Sam said.

Bucky looked surprised, but said yes. “He was obviously distressed,” he said firmly, Steve curling in on himself even more.

“It may have been very obvious to you,” Sam said. “But you are the only one that can hear his thoughts. As you said, the two of you don’t spend a lot of time with the others, so it would be much harder for them to know that he was distressed.

Steve,” he continued, looking at the small ball of curled up super soldier shoved into Bucky’s side. “Why didn’t you tell Tony and Bruce that you didn’t feel comfortable during the examination? If they’re even half as good of people as I think they are, they would have stopped the moment that you asked them to.”

“If they looked over me then they would be less stressed,” Steve said, slowly lifting his head. “If they’re less stressed, the mission will go much more smoothly.

And I’m not weak!” He protested, “it’s a simple medical exam, not torture or anything!”

“I’m not saying that you’re weak,” Sam said carefully. “Are you saying that Bucky’s weak for not liking medical exams?” He questioned, making a guess.

“No!” Steve sputtered, looking shocked. “But it’s not-it’s different!”

“It may be different in intensity,” Sam said. “I honestly don’t know, I’m not one that can read both of your minds, but it’s the same idea. You’ve got a bit of a double standard there Steve. Be aware of that.”

This was probably the end of the session. Both Steve and Bucky looked pretty stressed, and Bucky had edged his way back in front of Steve, and was a lot more tense. Not much else would get through to them now.

“Why don’t we stop here,” he said. “This session seems about over for the day, but I can watch a movie or something with you guys later if you want.”

He got up and went to the door, but before he walked out, he turned around and said, “thank you for trusting me enough to share that with me Bucky.

Steve, being scared or apprehensive of something does not make you weak, even if it seems so much less than other people’s fears. Trauma is trauma, no matter how small.

And both of you? You are allowed to say no. You are not assets. You have choices, and as long as you don’t hurt anyone or yourselves, you are allowed to do anything you want.”

He turned and walked away, overwhelmed as always at the horrible things his patients had gone through, how strong they both were to endure it, how they both deserved all the help they could get. It had only reinforced the feeling that he definitely wasn’t qualified for this, and it wasn’t self-depreciation this time. They deserved therapists who had experience dealing with things like this, who could help them so much more. Sam would research all he could, and be their therapist for now, but he would make sure that vetting a proper therapist for each of them would be put on the top of the list of things to do, and the moment that those qualified therapists showed up, he would step aside.

“JARVIS,” Sam said once he had made his way into his temporary apartment in the tower. “Once everyone is back in the tower, can you call a team meeting in the common room? It’s not exactly an emergency, but they need to know about this.”

“Of course,” JARVIS replied.

“And if you get the chance,” Sam said, remembering JARVIS’ protectiveness over them when he had first come to the tower... was it really only three days ago? “Make sure that they know they have choices, and if they need to eat, maybe suggest takeout instead of meal replacement shakes?”

“Of course,” JARVIS said again. “And I must thank you for making their state known, so my interaction protocols can be changed.”

Sam knew that JARVIS was an AI, a highly sophisticated computer program, but... he could have sworn that he heard a trace of emotion in there...

“Anytime,” he said eventually.

While he waited for the rest of the Avengers to return, he did some reading on anything he could think of that might help Bucky and Steve, and when that got too stressful, he baked a batch of his famous lemon raspberry muffins, which helped calm him down, and would give him, (and possibly Steve and Bucky later) something tasty to eat.

+-+

When Sam walked into the common room after the meeting had been called, everyone except for Steve and Bucky were there.

“You called for a meeting?” Thor asked.

“Yeah,” Sam replied, “and it’s pretty important.”

“More important than the mission to destroy Hydra?” Natasha asked blandly, “we have some important information.”

“You guys can plan later,” Sam said. They all looked at each other, and let him continue. “So I was talking to Bar-Bucky, during our therapy session-” Sam said.

“He actually talks?” Tony interrupted.

“Yeah,” Sam continued, trying to stay unruffled. “But he thought that the therapy I’ve been giving them is-in his own words-asset assessment and maintenance. But that at least wasn’t unexpected with what I understand of what happened to him. What was unexpected was that he thought of Steve as an asset as well.”

“An asset?” Darcy asked cautiously, “he is an asset to the team, what’s so bad about that?”

“Not asset as in a useful part of the team,” Sam said. “But an asset as in an object, a weapon.”

Clint, Natasha, and Tony looked at each other with wide eyes.

“Even if what we saw was the worst it got for Barnes,” Clint said. “Then it’s still awful! How could he think that Cap has been treated anything like that!”

“But if he thought that Cap was an asset,” Bruce said. “And he can read his mind, then he must not have felt anything in Cap’s mind to contradict that theory.”

“One of the four reasons,” Sam said. “Is because no one uses Steve’s name.”

“Really?” Tony said confusedly, “that can’t be true, I’m sure I have...”

“He mentioned that you called him by titles,” Sam said. “Like Captain, Rogers, and variations thereof. Not to mention that we don’t call Bucky by his name either.”

“I-“ Bruce said. “You’re right Sam, I didn’t even think of it as an option to call him by his name.”

“We need to change that,” Jane said.

“Agreed,” Thor replied. “But you said there were four reasons that he thought that Ca-Steve was an asset.”

“Yeah,” Sam said. “Another reason is that they were only interacted with when there was mission planning or “maintenance,”” he said, using air quotes. “It was probably mostly because you thought they could use some time alone-“

“no,” Natasha said, “that’s not it. Before we knew he was sick, we had a few team movie nights, but he always wiggled out of them. We stopped asking him... pretty quickly, but... we never really tried to make him want to join us.”

“We were the only people he interacted with regularly,” Clint said. “Minus Fury maybe. We tried to pull him in more once we realized he was sick but he just refused. And recently it was to give them all the space and time they needed.”

“Well now that he’s not dying,” Tony said. “Maybe he’ll be more likely to come along.”

“That’s not all,” Sam said. “There’s also the fact that all they have been eating since Bucky came around were the meal replacement shakes. It definitely was the most logical choice when they were out of it, and from what I understand they were too mentally exhausted to make actual food, but it was a contributing factor.”

“It was what... Bucky was fed when he was with Hydra,” Natasha said. “It was usually through an IV, but he occasionally had shakes on long missions.”

“Makes sense,” Sam said. “But the last reason is the most... intense of them. Apparently, assets are not touched unless necessary, and “maintenance” is preformed no matter if it’s uncomfortable or not.”

“Maintenance,” Tony said dully. “Like the medical exams we did yesterday.”

“But Steve let us examine him,” Bruce said. “If he would have asked, I would have stopped instantly!”

“I don’t doubt it,” Sam said. “But Bucky doesn’t know you, and from his point of view, aka, being able to read his mind, it was obvious that Steve was in distress. And Steve... well from what he said, letting you examine him would keep you guys from worrying too much, make sure the mission went smoother.”

“For that?” Bruce said incredulously, “if he hates medical that much-that just getting blood drawn and an MRI would make him distressed-then why couldn’t he try something else to make us less stressed about the mission! He was trading him being distressed, for us being slightly comforted!”

“He’s way too self sacrificing,” Sam said. “And they both need a therapist that can help them with their specific issues. Can you at least start vetting therapists in the background? I know that destroying Hydra is very important, but that seems like something that will be going on for a long time.”

“Of course,” Pepper said. “I’ll give JARVIS some parameters to search within, and then while we strategize, we can have that being worked on.”

“Good idea,” Sam said. “But if you guys are going to start the strategy meeting, I could use a break.”

“Of course,” Natasha said. “But do you think that Steve and Bucky will want to be involved in the meeting?”

“Definitely not,” Sam said. “They both had quite a few revelations, and could probably use the rest.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah... this is why Bucky has been so calm and non traumatized so far. Until this point, he believed that he had switched handlers, but now he has no torture, no wipes, no ice, and another asset to interact with and protect. His life is going great! But his memories are returning, if slowly, so he was questioning it a bit before this.
> 
> It was actually one of the most time consuming parts of writing this story, making sure that I didn’t have anybody call Steve and Bucky by their names (except for in their heads) so I’m glad that I don’t have to do that anymore!
> 
> The idea of Steve being so like Bucky, (an asset, not a person) was actually one of my first ideas for a one shot series! I couldn’t get it to work, but I put the idea into this story, and it works well here! 
> 
> Hope you enjoyed!


	16. Calculations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And planning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter today!
> 
> I just wanted to let you guys know that next weeks chapter might be delayed or not go up at all, because it needs a lot more editing than most of the other chapters, and I’m also getting down to crunch time on my Reverse Big Bang fic. I wish I had more time for it all, but I will try to get the next chapter out on time!

Bruce was mad, mostly at himself. He had personally contributed to making Bucky believe that Steve was an asset, and had distressed Steve. He remembered convincing Steve to be examined, so determined to do something to help, that he had ignored how cautious, how reluctant he had been. He couldn’t do anything about it now though, all he could do was promise himself to be more cautious in the future.

“What kind of stuff did you find in the base?” Pepper asked, after Sam had left the room.

“Mostly maintenance instructions,” Tony said. “And if we hadn’t seen the place, we would have assumed the instructions were for a machine, a weapon. It fits well with what Bucky seems to think. In the files were pictures of some of the machines in the base, all of which were human sized. From what we can tell, they electrocuted him to remove his memories, and froze him in ice to keep him from deteriorating like Steve. We have no clue how they figured out that they were soulmates, but didn’t figure out that sending him to fight Steve would be a good idea.”

“They treated him like a machine,” Natasha said. “A gun to be loaded and fired, something to be put away when he wasn’t needed.”

Like the Hulk, Bruce realized. Ross, and even Fury had treated the Hulk like a weapon to be fired, a chemical reaction to be controlled. Steve hadn’t done that, he had always asked if Bruce was ok with being the Hulk, which only made Bruce feel worse about making Bucky think that Steve was an asset.

But what if the Hulk had been captured by Ross? Would they have put him in ice when he wasn’t needed? His memories wiped constantly? Or would they have worse ways of making the Hulk be in their arsenal? He could feel the Hulk rising, to protect him from the fear. I’m safe, he thought. I’m here with the Avengers, and they would not let me fall into Ross’ hands.

“It didn’t help,” Clint said, breaking Bruce from his thoughts. “That in the instructions on how to deal with him, they referred to him as a machine, probably made it easier for them to not think of him as human. But we think that the files were stored in SHIELD’s files so they could move the information around without suspicion.”

“But why in SHIELD’s files?” Darcy asked, “if they wanted to move that information around, they would have to have access to the information without suspicion.”

“That’s probably why it’s in SHIELD’s files,” Natasha said. “Because having SHIELD files on any computer would be easy to wave away, but if Hydra files were separate, and said specific things about Hydra, all it would take is someone not shutting off their computer and a curious spy to reveal Hydra. But if the files were made to hide in the midst of SHIELD, then there would be no suspicion at all.

But the thing is, all of the files about Bucky in the computers in that base are restricted to agents of a clearance level of seven and above. That means, if he was to be taken out of cyro, at least one level seven or above agent would have to be there, and at least one level seven or above agent is Hydra.

The files look very unassuming, and from what we found out, the place was designated as a place to continue development and refinement of a top secret weapon that was acquired in the destruction of the Soviet Union. Scientists and soldiers were chosen to work there, but I’m pretty sure that when Bucky wasn’t awake, they worked on other projects, that were all Hydra. There was even communication of some sort with another base, with the code name of Whole Earth.”

“But how do you know that they were Hydra agents and not just innocent SHIELD agents?” Jane asked, “if Bucky was asleep while they were there...”

“It was obvious that it was a place where torture could easily take place,” Natasha said. “All the rooms were just off of the main room where we figure he was hurt the most.

But every agent in the place was someone recommended by Jasper Sitwell, which probably means that he’s Hydra. The chances of him choosing all Hydra agents by chance is impossibly unlikely, and there’s no point in leaving that kind of thing up to chance.”

“Sitwell was friends with Phil,” Clint said sadly. “Phil trusted him.”

“I gave Loki’s sceptre to Sitwell,” Natasha said grimly. “And I don’t know where it is now. If he wanted it for Hydra and got it, then it’s likely that the entirety of STRIKE team alpha is Hydra as well. It would be impossible for Sitwell to take the sceptre from the whole STRIKE team if they didn’t want the same things as him.”

“Alexander Pierce was mentioned in the files as well,” Tony said. “Apparently he had an interest in the project, and he’s a part of the World Security Council.”

“He has level ten clearance,” Clint said. “Of which only Fury matches.If there’s the possibility that he’s Hydra, then we have to assume that every SHIELD agent is Hydra unless proven otherwise.”

“But what about Fury?” Natasha asked. “I’ve always found Pierce to be very... focused on politics, but I think Fury should be told some things.”

Clint gave Natasha a significant look, and Bruce got mad. Fury might not be Ross, but he still saw the Hulk as a weapon. “You’re kidding right?!” Bruce said, “Clint just said that we shouldn’t trust any SHIELD agent unless we have proof that they aren’t Hydra!”

“We won’t trust him completely,” Natasha said sharply. “I can subtly let him know that something is off, but nothing about Hydra. He has level ten access and I don’t, we can get a lot of information from that kind of access. If he isn’t Hydra, then we can get lots of information and a powerful ally. If he is Hydra, then all he knows is that we suspect that someone wants to kill us, and Bucky was clearly sent here to kill us. It would almost be more suspicious to not be suspicious about an attack on the tower.

Even if they connected us to the attack at the base, we would only have the info that some of SHIELD wants us dead, the only reason that we know that it’s Hydra is because Bucky told Steve.”

“You are right about that,” Thor said. “I am not very good with stealth and the subtleties of politics, but it seems that the disadvantages are minimal, and the possible advantages are many.”

“So it’s agreed?” Clint asked, “Natasha subtly mentions her suspicions to Fury, so we can see what side he’s on?”

Everyone nodded, even Bruce, but he knew that now that Natasha had explained, it made a lot more sense.

“You said you captured all of the agents in the base,” Pepper said. “But where are they? We don’t exactly have jail cells in here.”

“They’re in the Hulk room,” Tony said. “It was built for someone stronger than even several agents, and JARVIS is keeping an eye on them.”

“What are you going to do with them?” Jane asked.

“We’re going to try to get some information from them,” Clint said. “I didn’t recognize any of them, so they’re probably low level agents, probably minimal training in interrogation resistance.”

“Interrogation?” Darcy asked, “like torture?!”

“Definitely not,” Natasha said. “Torture by itself will only get you wrong answers. It makes them want to say anything that might get them out of it, even if they don’t have the information you’re looking for. Torture can have its place in interrogation, but I get much better answers when they don’t even realize that they’re giving me all the information I need.”

“Maybe don’t start interrogations right away,” Tony said. “I could use your guys’ help in decoding some of the files. JARVIS is working on breaking the codes and de translating them, but you guys have actual experience in spy talk.”

“Fair enough,” Clint said. “We can let them stew a bit longer, might even give us better answers!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact that I realized when researching clearance levels for this part:Phil Coulson being alive was known (or at least, the information was available for) agents with a clearance level of seven or above. Steve had a clearance level of eight. Clint had a clearance level of seven. Natasha had a clearance level of six. This is all from the wiki app called Fandom. Make of this what you will.
> 
> Also, needing a high clearance level to access the files would make it make slightly more sense why Pierce was there when Bucky was wiped in the movie, because Sitwell had been recently been killed, and they needed someone with a high clearance level.


	17. JARVIS is awesome

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And comfort food is... comforting

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! I just wanted to say, I know I haven’t said anything about BLM, mostly because I didn’t want to put the effort in to talking about it. I fully support the movement though, and I’ve been doing a bit more reading. Silence is violence, and I need to use what influence I have to speak up, so I’m saying this:if you do not support the Black Lives Matter movement, please unsubscribe from any of my stories, and my account in general. I will not tolerate hate, and please spread love and knowledge as much as you can! Thank you!
> 
> As for this chapter, thank you for waiting an extra week for it! This is in Bucky’s POV, has lots of Bucky feels, and some of my headcanons for JARVIS, so I hope you enjoy! Warnings for... general Winter Soldier warnings, and fear of punishment.

The As-Bucky was mixed up. He was feeling... it was almost like cautiousness, but sadder. Steve had been feeling all the bad things when they had been dismissed by Sam, and he knew that Steve could not stay like that.

In the hallway outside Sam’s room, he had taken advantage of the fact that Steve had barely been standing, very shocked, and clearly exhausted, supporting him to their... rooms maybe.

Assets didn’t have places that they owned, they had storage, places where they were out of the way until they were needed. But if they weren’t Assets, if the rooms were _theirs_... were they allowed to stay in them? Would the others not be allowed to come in?

He locked the door once they were inside the room. If they weren’t allowed to do that, it would be a minor infraction, and despite how easy it would be for someone to force their way in, it calmed him, helped him focus on his goal, to make Steve feel better.

He lay Steve gently on the impossibly soft bed, and went to the door, food the next priority.

‘No!’ Steve pushed frantically, ‘don’t leave!’

Steve had been reluctant to let... Bucky out of his sight, ever since he had... returned? But he needed food, comfort, and sleep, and the best way to do that was to let Steve nap while he figured out the food situation.

He gently pressed him into the mattress, keeping him there, keeping him safe.

‘You have to stay here,’ he pushed softly. ‘You are safe here and you need food.’

‘I’m fine,’ Steve pushed weakly. ‘I can get up, it’s not like I’m injured!’

‘Like that would stop you,’ he pushed. Steve was exhausted, but he was also stubborn, and would make every attempt to stay with Bucky, but if he could make Steve fall asleep first...

‘Ok,’ he pushed reluctantly. ‘Let’s sleep first then, work out food when we wake up.’

He lay down facing Steve and deliberately relaxed himself, breathing long and slow. He knew that Steve could feel his emotions, so maybe if he was relaxed enough, he wouldn’t be able to ignore his exhaustion anymore.

Bucky had slept a lot since he arrived here, just being near Steve had been relaxing, he wasn’t in any pain (besides the ache in his shoulder) for the first time that he could remember, and he had felt almost drugged with peace. Steve had offered to keep watch for him when he slept when Bucky worried about the safety of it, and he had felt absolutely safe, completely protected, and it was past time that Bucky should do it for Steve. He now knew that Steve had also been awake because he feared that this was a dream, that he would disappear once he woke up, and with the confused tangle of things that had happened, he needed lots of rest.

Steve’s breathing gradually began to slow, his eyes drifting shut, and shuffled closer to him, tucking himself into his side, wanting more contact. He waited until Steve had been still and calm for several minutes, then slowly began to extract himself from him, more careful than he had been for the most difficult of shots, because Steve could not wake up.

Once he slowly closed the door and got into the kitchen, he froze. He knew that they had been told that eating human food was ok by Sam, but he had only recently arrived, and was not part of the team. He didn’t want to distract any... (not _handlers_ , but what else would they be?) from their tasks. Either way, it would be a good idea to be safe, they were clearly cautious of him, knew that he was dangerous, so they would probably take any excuse they could get to keep him under control.

That was what you did with weapons after all, guns had a safety, missiles had targeting programs, and knives had sheaths. And if they thought he needed to be controlled, who would protect Steve? Steve needed food, that was what he had gone into the kitchen for.

He needed to focus.

He had seen Tony talking to the person in the walls though, and the voice had called him sir, and the rest by their titles. The person in the walls could do a lot of important things, and talk anywhere in the building, he would probably know what was allowed.

“JARVIS,” he said cautiously, remembering hearing _don’t say anything unless you’re asked a question soldier._ But there was no reprimand, so he continued. “What foods are permitted to eat?”

“All of the food in the kitchen is yours and Captain Rogers,” JARVIS said calmly. “What kind of food would you like to eat?”

His heart skipped a beat. This had to be a trick, a test to see if he would violate his programming, but... Steve needed proper food. With how much he ate, and how bad he had felt about only giving Bucky the shakes... a warm meal would probably help him feel a bit better. He would be as compliant as possible, make the punishment less if it was a trap.

“What would you recommend,” he said cautiously.

“I would suggest soup or oatmeal of some kind,” JARVIS said calmly. “It would be best that you get used to solid food gradually, and both are commonly said to be very comforting.”

“Soup then,” he said. It felt right somehow.

“There is currently no soup in the tower,” JARVIS said. “Would you prefer to order is some, or make it yourself?”

“Make some,” he said quickly. If someone else made the soup, they could tamper with it, maybe figure out where they were. It wasn’t worth it.

“Would you like me to suggest a recipe?”

“Yes,” Bucky said, relieved that it didn’t seem that he had made a mistake.

“I would suggest beef and barley soup, once you are done, and have put it in the pot, you can return to Captain Rogers and relax until it is time to add the barley, and then you can leave it after that. By all accounts, the longer it cooks, the better it tastes.”

“Sure,” Bucky said. “Do you have a recipe?”

“I will send the recipe to the tablet in the living room,” JARVIS said. “If you need any clarification on words used in it, you can ask me to clarify. I would suggest gathering and preparing all ingredients before beginning.”

There was a ding, and the square of black glass on the table in the living room lit up. It was easy to navigate, but it only reacted to his flesh fingers. He pulled the right ingredients out of the fridge and pantry, awed at the variety and sheer volume of food in there, getting distracted for a few minutes, but he got back on track.

Following the advice of JARVIS, he began to cut up the ingredients, clumsily at first, but it quickly got easier, chopping fast with the flesh arm, and steadying it with the metal arm, so he didn’t have to stop if the knife slipped. He had a flash of worry about the possibility of gross things in the gaps in the arm, but cooking anything made it safe to eat, so it should be fine... It was calming though, like the focus of a long shot but... warmer and calmer. Once everything was chopped up, he cooked up the garlic, onions, and beef, making sure they didn’t burn, flipping the beef with his metal fingers. Then he placed everything in the enormous pot, and put it on the stove.

“I will set an alarm for thirty minutes if you would like,” JARVIS said.

“You can do that?” He asked, how was that even possible? That was incredible.

“Yes I can,” JARVIS replied.

“Then please do that,” he said. “But can you make the alarm quiet? Steve needs all the rest he can get.”

“Very well,” JARVIS said. “Enjoy your rest.”

“Thank you,” Bucky said, moving to Steve’s room.

He had not been disturbed by the talking or the smells of cooking, which was nice, and Bucky lay down in front of him, curling into his body heat. He watched Steve, studying his long eyelashes, his face slack with calm. He could see the tiny worry wrinkles near his eyes, the soft looking slack of his lips. His hair was tousled, soft and golden. Steve moved slightly, exposing red lines on the parts of his face that had been pressed against the pillow.

There was a small beep, and JARVIS began to speak quietly. “It is about time that you put the barley in the soup.”

“Thanks JARVIS,” he whispered.

He didn’t want to leave the warmth and safety of the bed, but the soup needed to be tended to, and... he needed to make sure that everything was still in order. He carefully extracted himself, feeling a sharp pang in his chest, but made it out of the room without incident.

He began to secure the rooms, carefully checking that all of the doors and windows were firmly closed and locked, and there were no other possible entrances. He checked for bugs as well, though he knew that JARVIS had to have microphones and cameras to be able to communicate the way he did. He needed to know if anyone else would be listening in on them or would be able to see them. Luckily there was nothing but... he had to ask.

“JARVIS?” He asked cautiously. “What methods are used to secure the information you gather?”

“I acquire video, audio, thermal imaging, and heart rate information,” JARVIS said. “Only general temperature readings and heart rate monitoring are available without your permission, mostly to reassure others of your physical state. All other information on you is immediately sent to a secure server that can only be accessed with your explicit permission, unless keeping it private would become a detriment to security. The information is used for optimization of my routines and protocols, and to prevent attacks. I am authorized to use heavy force to detain anyone who would take the information.”

He couldn’t help but be relieved by the security of the knowledge, that no one would know about him. He knew that he had done... awful things, if people knew what he had done, he would be chased down, and he couldn’t put Steve in danger like that.

“Could you alert me?” Bucky asked softly, “if Steve is in danger, or sick, or...” anything really. He knew that once Steve got back on his feet, he would be going after his former handlers, and nothing would stop him. It felt like something he had needed for longer than he had memories of.

“I would only be able to read his state when he is in the tower,” JARVIS said. “And you would need his explicit permission, but yes, that would be possible.”

“Thank you JARVIS,” Bucky said, and turned back to the bedroom.

Steve had shifted a bit in his absence, almost pouting now, and he quickly tucked himself back into place, the tense ache in his shoulder abating slightly.

Then JARVIS beeped again, and said, “Samuel Wilson would like to talk with you. Would you like to answer him?”

“He... he has to be quiet,” Bucky managed. “Steve is asleep.”

“Of course,” JARVIS said. There was a small pause, then another quiet beep, and Sam’s voice came through.

“Hey man, how are you doing?”

“Functional,” he said. It was always the least risky option. “Steve is... functional.” Less functional than him, but still functional.

“Can you be more specific?” Sam asked.

That... that was not something he had ever been asked before-he had a flash of memory, a handler asking for a functionality report-he shook it off, he couldn’t risk Steve waking up if the feelings got bad enough, if that was even possible.

“He is... only feeling bad. He needs food, sleep, and comfort.”

“Do you need any help?” Sam asked.

“No!” He said sharply, a sudden urge to strangle Sam rising in him. He could take care of Steve by himself very well thank you!

But he had disobeyed, had said no, and had been confrontational! His heart beat faster, his mind screaming at him, fear coursing through him. “It’s the Mission,” he said frantically, breath catching. Maybe if he could prove that he was devoted to the Mission, then he might be punished less severely. “It’s the Mission, to keep him safe and happy, it’s the Mission. The Asset has been proven to be the most effective at both protecting him and making him happy.”

“Whoa there!” Sam said firmly. “I am not going to punish you for what you believe you did wrong. That is not ever what I want to do! But my own mission is almost the same as yours, but for both of you. I want to help you.”

He felt a tiny bit of relief, but... it was just a little bit wrong. “It’s not my mission,” he said. “It’s the Mission.”

Sam paused for a while, and he could hear him drumming his fingers on a table, then spoke again, slowly and carefully. “It’s your first priority right? All other missions come in second.”

“Yes,” Bucky said, relief washing through him. “Protecting him and making him happy is the Mission.”

“What makes it the Mission?”

“It... it just happened,” he said. “When I saw him, touched him, I knew it was the Mission. It was like... knowing how to breathe.”

“Like habit,” Sam said thoughtfully. “Do you have any memories of that being important before you came here?”

“Yes,” he said quietly, remembering tiny flashes of moments. “It’s always been the Mission.”

“Good to know,” Sam said. “I did say earlier that I might want to watch a movie with you two later. Are you ok with that?”

He froze.

The idea was a bad one, Steve needed quiet, and to rest away from everyone, even if he was awake. But was it even allowed-

“You don’t have to say yes,” Sam said firmly. “I will not be offended, or angry, and I will not punish you for saying no, not ever. If that’s what you feel is the best for both of you, then say no.”

“I don’t want you to,” Bucky said quietly, as compliant as he could.

“Then I won’t,” Sam said. “But if you do need help, a listening ear, or just a distraction, don’t hesitate to call me. I can’t promise to be available all the time, but I will be as supportive as I can. But I’ll leave you to it now. Bye.”

“Bye,” Bucky said quietly. A quiet beep sounded again, and he began to relax again.

Steve had only shifted slightly, not woken up, despite the loud conversation that had happened. They rested for a while, Bucky studying Steve all over again, finding new things to be awed at, the sun streaks in his hair, the shape of his cheekbones. But then he began to shift, his brow wrinkling, making soft worried sounds.

A nightmare.

He shook Steve softly, preparing to tackle him if something went wrong. He had gone after Steve once, after waking from a vague nightmare of blood and ice, so he knew what could happen.

Steve jolted up, eyes wide and staring, but only pushed at him a bit in his waking panic.

‘Bucky?’ He pushed, them lunged forwards in a hug.

He barely managed to fight down the instinct to attack, but Steve pushed his face into Bucky’s shoulder, and shook. He could feel the dragging sadness in him, spurring the wetness spreading on his shoulder. They stayed there for a while, Bucky pushing feelings of warmth and safety to him. Then he heard Steve’s stomach snarl.

‘Food,’ he pushed, remembering the soup simmering on the stove.

Steve wobbled upwards, and they staggered to the kitchen, Steve supporting himself on Bucky. He grabbed the pot from the stove and put it on the table, then grabbed spoons and bowls for them both. They sat down at the table, Steve curling into his side, and ate.

‘Sorry,’ Steve pushed when he had gotten his second bowl. ‘For everything. For me being so crazy and you having to take care of me. For making you think that you were still an asset.’

‘There is nothing to be sorry for,’ Bucky pushed. ‘It is my mission to make you happy and safe and... you did not know that it was an option. And... taking care of you makes me happy.’

Steve smiled, a little sad, and pushed, ‘you said those exact words from you so many times before everything. I... I’m so glad that you’re here now.’

‘You are sad,’ Bucky pushed. ‘How can I help?’

‘Just keep doing what you’re doing,’ Steve pushed. ‘I don’t know what else you could do.’

He could feel the exhausted sadness in Steve, dragging him down. ‘Once you finish this bowl,’ Bucky pushed, realizing that Steve had stopped eating. ‘We can go back to bed, and cuddle for as long as you want.’

Steve sighed, but resumed eating, slower than he had before, but steadily.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As you might be able to tell, one of my favorite foods is beef and barley soup! Look up a recipe if you don’t know it, it’s really delicious, simple, and relatively healthy!
> 
> Bucky isn’t the best at communicating, but he’s getting there, and Sam is patient. 
> 
> I had a lot of fun writing this chapter, so I hope you enjoyed it!


	18. Fury’s dead?!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Or maybe not, but Steve wants to kill him now, so he might be dead soon

The next day, Thor was helping make breakfast for everyone, frying the bacon while Clint cut the fruit, and Jane and Darcy argued about pancake additions. Bruce was making a large pot of coffee and boiling some water for tea, and everyone else was sitting around the table, dozing. Thor was concerned about Steve and Bucky though, he had not seen them since the meeting yesterday morning, they weren’t here at breakfast, and with all that had been revealed since then...

“Sam,” he asked. “Do you know if Steve and Bucky are alright?”

“I’m not sure,” Sam said. “I haven’t seen them since before the meeting. I did talk to them yesterday afternoon though, and I don’t think they were doing too badly.”

“If you go see them,” Thor said. “I would ask that you send my apologies, that Bucky thought even for a second that we saw Steve as less than human, that I only wished to respect his position.”

“I think Thor can speak for all of us on that,” Natasha said. “But I’m the one who should have seen it, I’m the one who came closest to understanding.”

“I’ll pass that on,” Sam said. “But I doubt he’ll blame you. I may as well go now actually, see how they’re doing.”

As they all sat down to eat, Thor couldn’t help but remember the look on Loki’s face when he found out that he was a frost giant, calling himself a monster, like he was less than human... he felt a pang in his chest. That’s what he had done, or at least that’s what he had let happen through his inattention.

Then JARVIS interrupted the slightly awkward silence. “Sir,” he said. “There is something important to be brought to your attention.”

“Go ahead JARVIS,” Tony said, looking up from his tablet.

“There has been a death certificate filed for Nicholas J. Fury.”

“What?” Tony said, jumping to his feet. “I thought he was as invulnerable as a cockroach! You’re joking!”

“Not at all sir,” JARVIS said. “The reported cause of death is several bullet wounds leading to heart failure.”

“It was likely an assassination attempt,” Natasha said stiffly. “Right after I told him to take a look into something suspicious. That means we’re onto something, and he’s likely not Hydra.”

“Agreed,” JARVIS said. “By all accounts, he was mistaken for a criminal and attacked by police, but the footage shows that the police look much like the majority of STRIKE team alpha.”

“So it’s almost certain that the STRIKE team is Hydra,” Thor said. “And that Fury wasn’t.”

“It’s possible that wasn’t the reason,” Clint said. “But that’s most likely what happened.”

There was a heavy silence around the table, the others mourning a seemingly constant, though annoying, presence, and Thor mourning a possible powerful ally.

“We’re going to need to start planning properly,” Natasha said. “I can interrogate the ones we captured, see if we can get some names of higher ups, maybe some locations and their plans.”

“Good idea,” Bruce said. “If they were bold enough to go after Fury...”

“Sir,” JARVIS said, “Maria Hill has driven a delivery van into the garage, there is one other person in the vehicle, but they are hidden in the back.”

They all looked at each other, and everyone except Bruce piled into the elevator.

“Keep an eye out for anything odd down there everyone,” Clint said. “And Bruce, make sure that no one else tries to make it into the tower with JARVIS.”

“Of course,” Bruce said, the elevator doors closing.

Thor put a hand on Mjolnir, preparing for a battle.

The doors opened, revealing who he assumed was Maria Hill.

“You brought everyone,” she said raising an eyebrow.

Then Fury stiffly climbed out of the van, and said, “you really didn’t need a welcoming party this big for little old me.”

“Fury?” Tony said, surprised. “There is a death certificate in your name, and you still come along to bug me?”

“Reports of my death were greatly exaggerated,” Fury said. “We should get inside though, so we can talk through this situation. Somehow I have the feeling that you know more than me. But where is Captain Rogers?”

“Steve is...” Tony said hesitantly. “It’s complicated. We should go upstairs before we talk. JARVIS, let Bruce know that it’s Fury.”

The elevator ride was awkward, with all of them crammed into an elevator, even one as large as Tony’s, all coming down from their adrenaline rushes.

“Huh,” Bruce said, once the elevator doors opened. “I almost thought that Tony was joking. We should probably figure out what we’re doing from here though.”

Fury sat down on one of the couches, oddly stiff, Maria following him.

“How did you know that something fishy was going on?” Fury asked, “aside from an assassin coming after you. I know you wouldn’t tell me about your suspicions in that much detail if it was that simple. And why is Captain Rogers’ location complicated?”

“May as well start from the beginning,” Bruce said. “It may not make sense at first, but it really is related. Steve was sparring with Natasha when we were all training together, and fainted for what seemed like no reason. When he woke up, he told us that he and Bucky Barnes had somehow managed to bond their souls together when they were young, and being apart from Bucky was literally killing him.”

“How long ago was this?” Fury asked, blinking in surprise.

“A couple weeks ago,” Clint said. “But apparently not very many people stay dead at the moment.” He looked significantly at Fury. “But they can share each other’s pain, and hear each other’s thoughts. One day, about a week ago, Steve began to feel what he thought was Bucky in pain. We stopped Steve from going after him, because Bucky seemed to be coming here. JARVIS was monitoring the tower, and when Steve said that Bucky was close, we saw that the Winter Soldier was preparing to climb up the tower.”

“So the Winter Soldier is the assassin that attacked you?!” Fury said incredulously, “he’s notorious for staying in the shadows, why would he do something so bold, and why now?”

“He didn’t attack,” Tony said. “Steve was on his own floor, called us and said that Bucky was on a mission from Hydra, and didn’t even remember his own name. Bucky climbed up to Steves floor before we could do anything, and-JARVIS, remind me to work on defences for the outside of the tower-but Bucky didn’t attack Steve or anything. We’ve been working on trying to figure out what else is happening since then.”

“Hydra in pretty integrated into SHIELD,” Natasha said. “We’re pretty sure that Sitwell is Hydra, as well as STRIKE team alpha.”

“I might have figured that out when I noticed that some police officers looked suspiciously like the STRIKE team.” Fury said wryly, “but are you sure that it’s Hydra, not a new organization that is using it’s name?”

“Yes,” Natasha said. “We managed to find one of their bases, and in all the files, there was no mention of the name Hydra, except that Bucky knew that he was working for Hydra. Well... I say working for them in a loose sense, from the files we found, they treated him like a gun. An object to be used then put away. It’s very obvious that he had no choice at all.”

“But where’s Captain Rogers then,” Fury said suspiciously.

“He is resting,” Thor said, making an attempt to sound as intimidating as possible. If they needed him to, he would protect them from Fury as long as possible, he would give them all the rest they needed to heal and get better.

“From what I know from Sam, they both had a rough day yesterday, but I will ask if they would like to come down.”

“Who’s Sam?” Maria asked, “and who else knows of Hydra still existing?”

“Sam is the therapist we hired in an attempt to help Bucky,” Pepper said. “And only the people in this room, Sam, Steve, Bucky, and the Hydra prisoners we captured know that something suspicious is going on.”

“Steve, Bucky, and Sam are on their way downstairs,” JARVIS said.

“You can meet Sam and Bucky yourself than,” Pepper said.

Sam came in first, saying, “hey. JARVIS informed me of the situation. But I was only gone for a little while, how did everything go to shit so fast?”

“That’s a part of the superhero gig I guess,” Darcy said, and Bucky came into the room. He came in slowly, almost completely covering Steve’s body with his own, protecting him.

“Haven’t seen you in a while,” Steve said quietly, poking his head out from behind Bucky. He looked to be in rough shape, pale and miserable, with deep bags under his eyes.

Fury looked completely taken aback, but only for a second, then raised an eyebrow and said, “looks like your pet assassin is a bit protective.”

“He’s not my pet,” Steve spat.

“Fine,” Fury said. “But he hasn’t attacked anyone?”

“The closest he got,” Clint said. “Was when he thought we were threatening Steve.”

“Fine,” Fury said. “But I need to tell you about what I found, why they went after me. I had already... had some suspicions that something wasn’t right, that something was happening in SHIELD that I wasn’t aware of, which is why I took the idea so seriously. There were gaps in the information, and when I tried to look at it properly, after you notified me, it wouldn’t let me in, despite the fact that I have clearance to know everything about this organization. There are definitely some higher ups in on the Hydra thing.”

“But what was that information for?” Jane asked, “you said there were gaps in the information you were given, but what were you trying to look into?”

“It’s a project that SHIELD’s been working on for a while,” Fury said. “It’s called project Insight. We can use a few basic algorithms to figure out when people will commit major crimes, then be able to stop the threats before they happen, with Helicarriers in the sky, linked to a network of targeting satellites.”

“Wait a second,” Tony said. “For a proper algorithm to be able to predict that kind of stuff, you need information, and lots of it. Probably personal information before anyone has ever committed a crime. Where are you getting that information from?”

“That’s the tech’s jobs,” Fury said. “I don’t know.”

“So you’re saying,” Steve said, looking more alert (and angry) than Thor had seen him be since Bucky had come to the tower, practically vibrating with it. “That you will be holding a gun to the head of the entire world, with the power and flexibility to back that up, and you somehow didn’t expect that it would be taken advantage of?!

I knew that you sometimes didn’t think things through director, something I found out pretty quickly when I found out you had Hydra-esc weapons in development, but this? This is downright inhumane! You somehow didn’t think that this would end badly?”

“The world is getting more dangerous all the time!” Fury said sharply, “all sorts of aliens, peaceful and not, enhanced people are coming out of the woodwork like cockroaches-“

“And if you’re comparing them to cockroaches, then that’s part of your problem right there!” Steve shouted, “if you’re afraid of their power, then you will want to control them, to keep them under your thumb! If you approach them with an open mind, want them to be equals, then they will be so much more likely to be on your side, especially if they are discriminated against elsewhere! You being afraid of them, wanting to control them, will only make them more likely to be against you in the end!

And as for the aliens, if it was only for the aliens that we knew were hostile and wouldn’t stop, if you hadn’t added in an algorithm that needs who knows how much personal information, if it was only pointed towards space, if it was just a weapon for the most dire of circumstances, like the Avengers, I might have supported it!

But instead, you decided to use it to destroy your own fears, and when you became immensely paranoid because you were an obvious target, you created an awful power that never should have been created to alleviate that paranoia, and you’re still somehow surprised that it went wrong, that it was probably taken advantage of!”

Steve paused for a second, looking straight into Fury’s eyes, and glaring. “For you to ever have become director of SHIELD,” Steve said sharply. “Peggy must have greatly misjudged you.”

Fury stared at Steve, wide eyed, but not looking away. He had looked ashamed for a second, but had quickly pushed it down.

“You should rest now,” Maria said, interrupting the staring contest. “The doctor said to rest as much as possible, and if you don’t do that, I will have to punch you in your broken ribs.”

“You can have the guest room on the seventy-fourth floor,” Tony said. “We have plans to make.”

“Fine,” Fury said, wobbling upwards, and towards the elevator.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this chapter was very dramatic, in a lot of ways! I’ll start with the beginning. Everything is happening much sooner than it had been in the movie universe, mostly because Hydra knew that Bucky was deteriorating quickly, and would soon be useless, so they decided to use him to go after the Avengers so project Insight could go forward sooner. But they realized that no Avenger had been killed, so they attacked Fury to spur the project. 
> 
> As for Steve saying that he might have supported project Insight if it had only been a last resort weapon, only for alien emergencies, and it’s similarity to Ultron, I think that Steve didn’t support Ultron in the movies because he had been burned before by project Insight, he didn’t understand or know Tony well at that point, and Tony had been playing around with Infinity Stones that they had little information on, and accidentally made an evil AI, so Steve didn’t like the idea at that point.
> 
> Also, next week, instead of posting a chapter from this story, I will be posting a deleted scene! I had to choose one or the other, and the deleted scene takes place after this chapter, so I figured that I would post it. Hope you enjoyed!


	19. Making plans

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And two new Avengers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the second last chapter! One more to go!

Natasha felt almost as wobbly as Steve looked. The whiplash of thinking that Fury was dead, then seeing him in person had been harsh, but she managed to keep a straight face.

Steve looked exhausted, and was still staying behind Bucky, but the argument with Fury seemed to have revitalized him a bit, so he wasn’t nearly as quiet and placid as he had been. Bucky looked less concerned now too, looking almost proud, just like he had when she had put him on the ground the first time when he trained her.

Her memories from that time had always been blurred, barely there fragments of senses and moments, but with Bucky around, the memories came up more often, were just a little bit clearer.

“We need a plan,” Steve said once Fury had gone out of the room. “If Fury’s been “killed” then they won’t be expecting anyone else to be going after them. Project Insight was supposed to go up in a week, but with Fury’s supposed death and one of their bases attacked, it will probably go up much sooner.”

“Fury’s death will be all the reason they need,” Tony said. “If they want Insight to go up, they need the approval of the World Security Council, and Fury’s death will be enough of a threat to speed up the process.”

“Huh,” Steve said thoughtfully. “That’s why they wanted us dead. Not only so we wouldn’t mess up their plans, but also because if some of the Avengers died, that would definitely cause enough panic to make them want Insight that much more.”

“JARVIS,” Tony said. “Can you ask Fury who suggested this plan in the first place? Maybe who is supporting it as well?”

“Of course sir,” JARVIS said. After a short silence, he replied. “The Director said that Alexander Pierce is the one that has been the most supportive of the idea, and is one of the people that helped come up with it. He has also been working with those suspicious files.”

“And he’s a part of the World Security Council,” Natasha said. “So he would have a lot of influence.”

“He also has very high clearance in SHIELD,” Clint said. “I think his clearance level is only rivalled by Fury’s.”

“If he’s the mastermind behind this,” Steve said. “Then we’re going to have to go after him while we take down the Helicarriers.”

“Agreed,” Thor said. “He should not be free to give orders. And there is always the chance that he would escape, regroup, and come back.”

“We’ll have to split into teams,” Steve said. “We can discuss that once we have a better idea of what’s happening though. The most important question is how we’re going to make sure that Hydra doesn’t come back. I thought I defeated them once before, and they came back. We can’t let that happen again.”

Natasha couldn’t help but feel sorry for Steve, everything he had died for was still alive and well, making his sacrifice useless.

Bucky turned and placed a hand on his shoulder, giving him a soft look, probably talking to him. Everyone was looking at Steve, who looked uncomfortable, so Natasha spoke up.

“I have an idea,” she said, everyone turning to her. “Hydra is a major part of SHIELD, and both are highly secretive organizations. The worst enemy of secrecy is transparency.”

“The public will tear it apart,” Tony said. “At least in terms of popularity.”

“We should release all of SHIELD’s files,” Steve said. “That way, nobody has any doubt that SHIELD needs to be taken apart.”

“We’ll have to do it the day of,” Jane said. “If we leave a trace, they’ll have advance warning that something is happening, and they’ll keep their guard up higher.”

“Besides,” Tony said. “A lot of the files aren’t connected to the system, probably in computers not connected to the system. It’ll be much easier if I can get to the physical computer to get all of the files.”

“Good to know,” Steve said. “That’s all we can plan for now with what we know, so we should take a break, see what information we can get. We all need to get rested up, just in case something happens sooner than we think. But we need to find a way to get that information.”

“I can do that easily,” Tony said.

“But you also need to rest,” Pepper said. “I know you haven’t been sleeping much lately, with everything you’ve been doing. You can start it up, then get JARVIS to do the main bulk of it.”

Tony opened his mouth then closed it. “You’re probably right,” he said grudgingly.

+-+

Natasha took a nap while she waited, she had perfected the art of being able to sleep anywhere, for any amount of time, which was useful for missions.

She was woken up by JARVIS a few hours later and told to go to the common room. Everyone filed in eventually, even Fury and Maria, sitting anywhere there was room.

And while Bucky was still protectively in front of Steve, he looked a bit less haggard, and calmer too.

“We have some more information,” Steve said. “It’s been announced that Project Insight will go up tomorrow at about noon, and we’ve found out that Pierce will be having a meeting with the Council at about that time as well.

Maria has some chips for us that will replace the normal targeting chips, make them fire on each other instead of Hydra’s enemies. We’ll need to get inside each Helicarrier to replace the chips, and we also need to get the files, confront Pierce, and release the files.”

“I could release the files,” Natasha said. “It’ll be extra leverage, and I will be taking Fury along with me as well, the more off balance Pierce is, the better this will go for everyone.”

“Would you need an extra fighter?” Steve asked.

“I’ll be fine,” Natasha said.

“Tony, can you send the files to Natasha to release them once you’ve got them?”

“Definitely,” Tony said.

“Ok,” Steve continued. “Maria will be best on comms, to keep us all organized and on track. Tony will be snuck in earlier, so he can have all the time he needs to get all of the files.”

“I can just walk in,” Tony said. “It’s well known that I’m a little crazy and that I do what I want. No one will question me if I just waltz in, and... I helped make the engines for these Helicarriers better. They won’t question it.”

“You helped them with it?!” Steve growled, standing up suddenly, starting towards him and glaring.

Bucky grabbed him by the shoulder with his metal arm, and said “no. Don’t even try that.

If he problem solves even half as much as his father, they have him the problem and he wouldn’t rest until it was solved.

I did much worse for them, and you were tricked by them too. If you somehow don’t blame me, then you can’t blame him.”

That was the Yasha that she remembered, always just knowing, no matter how much you lied to yourself, and completely willing to hold you back until you realized what you were doing.

Steve slumped in Bucky’s grip, and Bucky dragged him backwards, until Bucky was in front again.

“Go back to planning,” he said firmly.

Steve sighed and said, “Tony, you’ll need a protecter, insurance.”

“I can do that,” Clint said. “I’m a SHIELD agent, so they won’t think I’m there to do anything but keep Tony in check.”

“Perfect,” Steve said. “Before the Helicarriers go up, I’ll go into the building, make an announcement so everyone knows about Hydra. That will make sure that we won’t be fighting any non-Hydra agents, and maybe even get some on our side. Everyone else, you’ll be staying here to make sure the tower is secure.”

“No,” Bucky said. “You are not going in there alone, with no one to watch your six. I won’t let you.

You told me that there was a message about how “Strucker’s twins” would be protecting the Helicarriers from the inside. If they think that two people are enough to protect three large Helicarriers, then they will be powerful.

I may not have many memories, but what I do remember is that we were always better as a team.”

“You shouldn’t have to fight if you don’t want to,” Steve said.

“My mission is to protect you. If that’s what it takes, then that’s what it takes.”

They stared at each other for a while, talking to each other.

“I can help too,” Sam said, breaking the silence. “Especially if those things are going to be flying.”

“What?!” Steve said.

“Oh yeah!” Tony replied, “the Exo-7 falcon suit was made by Stark Industries, and while the last one was locked up, I decided to make a better one for you! Pepper, I bet you’re glad now that I was spending time on that.”

“What is that?” Bruce asked as Sam gaped.

“It’s basically mechanical wings,” Tony said. “More maneuverable than anything but the Iron Man suit, but requires a lot of skill.”

“You made a pair for me?!” Sam gasped.

“I got bored,” Tony said, shrugging. “And the design needed an upgrade anyway.”

“Thank you so much,” Sam said. “But if I have those, I can be air support, keep an eye on things.”

“If you’re sure,” Steve said. “Then it looks like we’ve got a plan.”

“We can go in my jet,” Tony said. “I have an excuse to be in DC, and then we don’t need to worry about transport.”

“We’ll start up early tomorrow morning then,” Steve said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you enjoy Soulmate AUs, I will start posting a shrunkyclunks soulmate AU tomorrow for the Stucky Reverse Big Bang! Check it out once it’s posted!


	20. A battle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And a mindful conversation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And this is the last chapter! I really hope you enjoyed this story!

Steve was nervous for the whole time they stayed in the jet once they got to DC, worrying about everything that was to happen.

How many SHIELD agents were actually Hydra? Would any actual SHIELD agents even believe them? How was it possible that Hydra thought that two people could protect all the Helicarriers? What if one of the agents reminded Bucky of bad memories?

Bucky pushed reassurance to Steve. ‘Whatever you’re worrying about, it’ll be fine,’ Bucky pushed. ‘My mission is to protect you, and we have lots of backup.’

Steve grudgingly acquiesced, but kept himself alert for any communication from Tony.

As they snuck into the Triskellion through the vents much later, Bucky saw someone through a vent cover and froze, fear coming from him sharp and sudden.

It was Rumlow, walking in the direction of the Helicarriers.

When Fury had tried to convince him to join the STRIKE team, Rumlow had come along, had been charming, almost flirty. But judging by Bucky’s reaction, Rumlow had been someone that had hurt him, had known what was happening to Bucky.

The others had told him that the STRIKE team was Hydra, but it was different from seeing someone who had hurt Bucky, someone who scared him.

He felt a hot surge of anger in his belly, and he had the sudden urge to jump out of the vents and punch Rumlow in the face.

Bucky held him back though, pushing, ‘you can’t compromise your mission. I don’t know him, all I know is that he gives me a bad feeling.’

‘Fine,’ Steve pushed, grudgingly starting to move again. Sam tapped at Steve’s foot, and he realized that Sam couldn’t hear them, but they continued on.

When they had gotten to where they were supposed to be, and Steve had made his announcement, they started to make their way to where the Helicarriers were stationed.

“That was great man,” Sam said as they jogged. “Have you always been able to do that, pull incredible, inspiring speeches completely out of your ass?”

“I think so,” Bucky said quietly. “But not many people listened when he was little, didn’t like getting told what to do by a little guy.”

Then Bucky turned to Steve. “You got beat up a lot when you were little right?”

“Yeah,” Steve said.

Then they turned a corner, and ran straight into a group of agents.

“Wait,” one said, screeching to a halt. “Isn’t That the Win-“

Bucky tackled him, and killed them all quickly and efficiently, too fast to let them even call for help.

“Well,” Sam said as they continued down the hallway. “That was... something.”

“Not all of them know that I exist,” Bucky said, Steve feeling a hint of nervousness from him. “The less that know I escaped the better.”

“Fair enough,” Sam gasped.

They burst out onto the tarmac, where the Helicarriers were starting up. There was no fighting out here yet, Hydra must have staffed their most vulnerable place with only the most loyal of agents.

But they quickly began to notice Steve and Sam, beginning to rush towards them to begin fighting.

Bucky slunk along the side, hiding in plain sight, with his black combat gear, and the assumption that he was on their side.

He carefully took shots at as many as he could, while looking like he was with them, as Steve and Sam kept their attention from the front.

Then the Helicarriers began to rise, slowly but surely.

“We’ve got to get on them now!” Steve shouted into the comms.

The crowd of agents in front of them were thick though, their plans obvious.

“I can get you in,” Bucky said. “I can distract them, destabilize them, give you a chance to get onto them.”

“Ok,” Steve said.

Bucky slammed through the crowd, demolishing resistance, and clearing an area near the lowest one.

Steve saw Rumlow making his way to Bucky. “Soldier!” He commanded, shaking Bucky mentally. “Stand down! Submit to reprogramming!”

Steve could feel the tug of of the orders on Bucky, making him stagger.

Steve pushed, ‘don’t listen to him! You don’t have to follow their orders anymore, you can choose what to do!’

Bucky managed to shake the daze off, and slammed Rumlow into the pavement, a vicious satisfaction coursing through Bucky.

The other agents were surprised, and a few even began to run away.

Then Sam had enough room to take off and did, Steve managing to leap into the first Helicarrier.

Sam stayed above, sniping Hydra agents, and Steve chewed his way through the agents in the Helicarrier. It was easy, it had a large amount of agents, but they weren’t expecting him, and there wasn’t enough space for them to swarm him.

Bucky managed to leap up to the first one as he clicked the device into the targeting system, and then they leapt to the second one together.

It went even smoother than the first one, them working together like they had never left each other, their fighting clicking together like the buckles on his suit.

Sam was on alert in the sky, keeping an eye on them, sniping from above, where no enemies could reach him. They easily put the second device on the second Helicarrier, and leaped to the third.

This one was eerily quiet, maybe the twins were the only ones on this one.

There was a sudden blur, and his shield was gone, the wind knocking him backwards.

‘My gun is missing,’ Bucky pushed.

‘And my shield,’ Steve pushed back.

They went back to back, moving towards where the targeting blade was, keeping an eye out for anything abnormal.

Steve had thought that the blur had the hint of a human figure, maybe it was someone else with super speed, just... much quicker than them.

They made their way to the walkway slow and careful, listening to Sam helping the loyal SHIELD agents keep the Hydra agents in line.

Steve’s back was to the console, but Bucky pushed what he was seeing to Steve.

It was a young girl standing in front of the console, in clothes that looked to be more for fashion than protection. She looked to be in her late teens, not very strong, and easy to defeat physically.

‘Don’t attack yet,’ Steve pushed. ‘She hasn’t attacked us yet.’

Steve’s vision went back to normal, and he went back to keeping his eyes on the entrances.

It was possible that she was the speedy one that had stolen their weapons, but there were supposed to be twins, and they had a lot of time to prepare. She was probably a trap, drawing their attention, looking weak, but she could probably take care of herself.

Steve and Bucky spun around each other slowly so Steve was the one facing her. Bucky wasn’t exactly eloquent at the moment, and was more physically trained than Steve, so he would do best to be on defence.

“Why don’t you move aside,” Steve said carefully, aware of how fast they were rising. “We don’t have any problems with you, all we want to do is to put our own device in the console.”

Maria’s voice rang in the comms, “you guys ok? The Helicarriers are pretty high up, they should be starting to fire soon.”

Bucky tugged lightly at the bond, a quick flicker of what he was seeing sent to Steve. There was a small white shape in the corner, and they prepared to attack, knowing that their time was running out.

Suddenly, a red light formed between them like a wall, a solid plane between them.

Then the white figure circled around them, darting in occasionally to push them around, keeping them away from the console.

The girl darted towards them and touched Steve.

‘How?!’ She said into his mind, loud and sharp, wrong. He could feel Bucky’s fear, the blinding blare of her thoughts almost painful in its wrongness.

The speedy kid stopped, staring at them. He was just a kid as well, tiny and blonde... he felt a sudden surge of protectiveness from Bucky.

“Just let me put the device in the console,” he said, feeling dizzy. “If you can read my mind, surely you can tell that I’m not lying. All Hydra wants is to destroy their enemies so they can rule unchallenged. Bucky... they hurt him, wiped his memories over and over so he wouldn’t fight them. They tortured him to get a super soldier on their side. What did they do to make you join them? What did they promise you in return?”

It was oddly quiet, the hight insulating them from the fighting below.

He could feel Bucky’s fear as she made her way to him, but he let her touch him.

She staggered back, eyes wide with fear.

“They treated you like weapons,” Bucky croaked. “Guns to be fired.”

“You trust the Avengers?” She said, eyes wide.

“Yes,” Bucky said. “But the Helicarriers are getting too high, just let us put the device in, and I swear you won’t be obligated to stay if you don’t want to.”

She hesitated, but said, “if you try to take advantage of us you will regret it.”

She was obviously scared, but the fact that she was trusting them? It was impossibly brave.

Steve made it to the console and plugged the device in.

“Charlie lock,” he said into the comms. “We could use a ride for us and two extra.”

“Somehow I get the feeling that they weren’t on our side to begin with,” Maria said dryly as they all made their way to the top, where a helicopter could land.

They clambered into the helicopter quickly, taking off as soon as they were all on.

“Are these the twins that were mentioned in the messages?” she asked, “they’re pretty young.”

The helicopter shook as the Helicarriers began shooting at each other, pieces of them starting to fall to the ground.

“They have powers,” Steve said. “Kind of like Thor.”

“I’m Wanda,” the girl said as they touched down.

“And I’m Pietro!” The boy said, jittering with energy as he bolted off the Helicopter.

“Looks like you have some Avengers trainees now,” Maria said with a grin as they all piled off the helicopter after Pietro.

“Might have to work on ourselves first,” Bucky said with a jolt of apprehension. “They deserve teachers that aren’t crazy.”

“And who are these kids?” Clint asked as he and Tony walked up.

“This is Wanda and Pietro,” Steve said. “They used to work for Hydra, but they seem to prefer us for now.”

“Then we’ll just have to convince them that we’re trustworthy,” Clint said. “I volunteer as tribute!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m actually really proud of this battle! Definitely not the best at action scenes, but I’m improving!
> 
> But this story is now done! This series is not over yet though. I have one more long story in this series, but I haven’t had the time to write it, I prefer to start posting stories when the first draft is nearly complete, and I have quite a few other projects on the go, so it might take a while. 
> 
> I promise that it will happen though, I have the basic plot worked out, and lots of ideas! 
> 
> I will be posting a few one shots set in this series though, and I have a short multi chapter fic being worked on for the Stucky Big Bang, so I will be posting in this series before the third story starts posting, but it might take a few months!
> 
> I really hope you enjoyed this fic! If you would like, I would love it if you would comment, maybe say your favorite part, or maybe give me some constructive criticism! Hope to see you all soon!

**Author's Note:**

> Yes Tony is Steve’s type, a badass brunette, who isn’t afraid to tell him that he’s being stupid.
> 
> Also, there will be multiple POV’s in this story, so you guys can see multiple perspectives.
> 
> I will be adding tags as I go, so please tell me if you think I missed one! The warning for graphic violence will come into play later, and I might need to up the rating eventually, so tell me if you feel that it needs to be higher. 
> 
> The next update will be next Tuesday!


End file.
